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EDDA AND THE OAK 





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EliaTO.'Pcattie 



TUit^lllustirations 

Tvatbarine lUerrill 


IXk^Tiall^ anJ Co., 
C^tca^o 71 etu "^ork XjTonJon 




Copyright, igii. 

By Rand, McNally & Company 





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€'CI.A‘^92334 ^ 


CONTENTS 


Page 

List of Illustrations vi 

Chapter I i 

Chapter II 15 

Chapter III 37 

Chapter IV 54 

Chapter V 71 

Chapter VI 88 

Chapter VII . 104 

Chapter VIII 121 


V 


LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 


The Fairies dancing under the Oak Frontispiece " 

Page 

The Old Oak 13 

Queen Goldheart in her Rose-leaf Boat 45 

Edda discovers the Fairy Ring of Mushrooms 76 

“She told Edda to bring her . . . some red flaunting 

poppies” 81 

Verda descending the Water-lily Stem to the Queen’s 

Palace 97 

“Their dishes were of acorn cups, and the waiters were 

flower dolls” 117 

Queen Goldheart and Bushy Tail 128 

Queen Goldheart turns her Back on Bushy Tail 129 

The Crow telling the Secret to Edda 132 


vi 




THE FAIRIES DANCING UNDER THE OAK 



EDDA AND THE OAK 


CHAPTER I 

E DDA lived at the very top of a building six stories 
high, which stood on a wide street in a city so large 
that if you were to start in to-day and count until 
the middle of next month you could not count all of the 
houses. The place where she lived was called a Top 
Flat; and with her lived her father, her mother, her cat, 
her story-books, and many toys. 

Besides all of these, Edda had a grandmother, but 
as Edda never had met her grandmother since she could 
remember she thought less about her than she did about 
the cat and the toys, which were with her all day, and 
sometimes on her bed at night. She knew how to get 
along very well without her grandmother, but no one 
ever had asked her to go a whole day without the gray 
cat and the toys. 

Living high up in the air as she did, and going down 
to earth only by means of a little cage run up and down 
by Toby the black boy, Edda could not play on the street. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


because her mamma liked “to keep an eye on her,” and 
no mamma, however clever, can keep an eye on a little 
girl who is playing six stories down below. So Edda 
only went on the street in the company of her mamma 
or papa or Fanny, the yellow-haired maid. Sometimes 
she went with her mamma to the shops for new shoes or 
a hat ; or to call on friends in their large, still houses. But 
if she went with Fanny it was to see the animals pacing 
up and down in their cages at the Park — wild animals 
with sad eyes — or to walk by the lake, which sometimes 
smiled and sometimes roared at her. 

Although there were many people living in the great 
building where Edda had her home, there was not another 
little girl — among them all, not one single little girl 
except Edda. So without Fanny with the yellow hair, 
Toby the black boy. Bubbles the cat, and Adelaide 
Alice the doll, Edda might have been very lonely. Even 
as it was, she had some trouble to keep herself happy all 
of the time. She would sit by the hour on the back porch 
and look at the houses, stretching away and away, 
crammed and jammed with people, and think to herself 
that surely there must be many little girls around some- 
where if only she could get at them. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


3 


Once she made up her mind that she would go out 
by herself and look and look until she found a little girl. 
So she took her father’s satchel out of the closet, packed 
it with her best clothes, helped herself to her mother’s 
pretty white parasol, and went out in the hallway and 
rang the bell for the little cage. But when Toby the 
black boy came he stood right in the way, so that she 
could n’t get past him, and said: 

“Who all is a-goin’ with you, Missie^?” 

“I ’m going by myself, Toby,” said Edda. “I ’m 
going to look for a little girl.” 

“What little girl, Missie^?” 

“Any little girl will do, Toby. Please let me go! 
I want some one to play with so bad!” 

Toby looked sorry. 

“I wish I knowed whar thar was a little girl, Missie, 
’deed I do!” But instead of letting her in the cage he 
picked her up and carried her to the kitchen, where Fanny 
was making pies. 

“If you-all doan’ watch out,” he said to the maid, 
“you’ll hab a little runaway heah! Bettah pay some 
’tention to this pore chile! She ’s perishin’, that ’s what 
she is — perishin’ of lonesomeness ! Same as folks perishes 


4 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


of hunger. Y assum ! Y ou all bettah look out ! Bringin' 
a chile like dat up with no place to play but a back entry ! 
Ought to be ashamed of ’emselves!” 

Toby went off, scolding, and Fanny stayed in the 
kitchen and scolded; but Edda did not mind that, for 
Fanny tied a real grown-up gingham apron around her, 
and put her up to the baking table with some flour and 
milk and sugar and nutmeg, so that Edda could make 
a custard pie. And she did — she made one; and when it 
was baked, father and mother and Edda and Fanny each 
ate a piece. Some was offered to the cat, which seemed 
to like it as well as had the rest of the family. 

As has been said, Edda did not know her grand- 
mother, although Edda was six and her grandmother was 
sixty-six, which, of course, had given them time enough 
to know each other well. But grandmother lived a 
thousand miles away from Edda. That was why she did 
not know her. 

It is a great pity for a grandmother and a little girl 
not to know each other, and so papa and mamma and 
Edda were glad when grandmother invited Edda to come 
away out to her house and live with her for three months. 
Grandmother wrote in her letter that a Lady-she-loved 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


5 


was going to make the journey, and would bring Edda 
safe to the end of her trip. 

So Edda’ s mamma made her some blue and pink and 
white dresses, and bought her a rose-colored cape for best 
and a dark blue coat for worst, and brown shoes and 
white shoes and sandals, and some sunbonnets and hats — 
one hat with rosebuds to match the cape — and told her 
she was to be a good and loving child, and Edda went 
away with the Lady-grandmother-loved. Adelaide Alice, 
the doll, went too. But not the cat. The cat stayed at 
home to keep the others company. 

Edda rode and rode on the train. She rode a day and 
a night and part of another day, but at last she came to 
grandmother’s town. And there was grandmother — like 
her picture, perfectly — and there was the little black car- 
riage and Lily White, the horse, about which Edda often 
had heard. So, when the Lady-grandmother-loved had 
gone with her own people, grandmother and Edda 
stepped into the little black carriage, and sitting side 
by side drove along the shady streets past homes 
that seemed to smile out at them, until they came to a gate 
at which Lily White turned in of her own accord. 

“This is home,” said grandmother. 


6 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


Edda looked around at the garden and the house 
with its wide porches, where the honeysuckle climbed up 
the trellises. 

“It is ever so much nicer than a Top Flat,” she said. 

Grandmother said she supposed it was, but that she 
never had seen a Top Flat. She brought Edda a glass of 
cool milk and some bread and butter, and then left her 
for a moment sitting in the shade. It was a warm day, 
and Edda had looked and wondered at all she had seen 
on her journey until she was as tired and sleepy as only 
a child can be. So as soon as she was left alone she 
crawled into the hammock and put her head on the pillow. 
And then — well, it is easy to imagine what happened. 

There is a sort of sleep which wraps a sleeper round 
like a black coat; and there is another sort of sleep that 
seems to float about the sleeper like a silver scarf. It was 
the floating, silvery kind of sleep that came to Edda, and 
every few moments she would almost awaken, and then 
she would hear the bees buzzing, or a cart rattling by, or 
a bird singing in the trees. All that seemed only to make 
her sleep sweeter, and she would curl up tighter in the 
hammock, and think what a fine time she would have 
when once she got ready to wake up. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 7 

By and by she really was ready. Her eyes popped 
open like snap-dragons, and she sat up and called : 

‘‘Grandmother! Grandmother!” 

A voice came back from within the house. 

“Edda! Edda!” 

So Edda jumped out of the hammock and pulled 
open the screen door and went into grandmother’s sitting- 
room. It was not at all the sort of a room to which she had 
been used. The windows were low and wide, and holly- 
hocks looked in at them. There was a fireplace with logs 
in it heaped high, ready and waiting to be lighted on a 
chilly evening. A large bowl, with little rainbows float- 
ing about in the glass, held some goldfish. Edda ran to 
them and laughed aloud. 

“Here is a fish that looks like an automobile,” she 
said to her grandmother. “Its eyes stare like lamps.” 

But just then she saw a yet funnier thing. A cat 
came into the room with a tail so like a bush, and with a 
walk so curious, that at first Edda almost thought it was 
not a cat. 

“Is n’t she made right T’ Edda asked. “Her tail is 
all raveled out, and her feet are the wrong size.” 

“Pussy is a Persian,” explained grandmother. “And 


8 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


as you say, her feet are the wrong size. She has six toes 
on each foot; but you must n’t talk about it, for it makes 
her terribly ashamed.” 

Before she had finished speaking, pussy, who knew 
very well what they were saying, dropped on her stomach 
and hid her feet so that no one could see them. 

“You see,” said grandmother, “her feelings are 
hurt.” 

“I ’ll never, never say anything about her toes again. 
I don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. But her tail, 
grandmother — must n’t I speak of that either*?” 

“Oh, that is the right kind of a tail for that sort of 
a cat, Edda. We think it a beautiful tail.” 

And at that, the cat got up and turned around three 
times as if she were trying to look at her splendid brush. 
Edda thought she got over feeling hurt quickly, for no 
sooner had she taken a seat in the wicker chair than the 
cat jumped up on the wide chair-arm to be near her. 
When Edda had run her fingers through the cat’s thick, 
soft fur several times, both felt they were becoming good 
friends, and Carrots, for her part, was sorry to see Aunt 
Caroline coming to the door. For she had learned long 
since that when a person comes into the room a mere cat 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


9 


has little chance of being noticed. This proved to be true 
in the present case, for no sooner had Edda been told that 
this was her Aunt Caroline than she pushed pussy away as 
if she had been so much thistle-down, and ran to throw 
her arms about her aunt’s neck. 

Although Aunt Caroline was Grandmother Pratt’s 
daughter, she lived in a house of her own because she had 
married Uncle Donald Craig; but she came every day to 
see her mother, and when she came she always brought a 
little gift. Sometimes it was a pot of honey made by her 
own bees; and sometimes a jar of jam made from berries 
grown in her own garden ; and sometimes a pat of butter 
made from the milk of her own cows. To-day it was two 
gooseberry tarts for Edda, set in a tiny basket with rib- 
bons run around the edge. 

Edda could not help hearing what her grandmother 
said to her aunt. 

“She is a strange little girl, Caroline — a queer, shy 
little girl.” 

“An odd little girl, is she^” said Aunt Caroline with 
a laugh. “Then I know I shall like her!” And to Edda 
she said: “Come out into the garden and eat the tarts 
there.” 


10 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


So Edda carried the tiny basket out into the garden, 
and she and her aunt sat side by side on a bench under- 
neath a tree that arched over them as if it were an 
umbrella. 

“Look up at me, Edda,” said Aunt Caroline, “so that 
we may know each other’s faces.” 

So they looked straight at each other, and Edda saw 
that Aunt Caroline’s eyes were a sort of green like the 
jewel in her mamma’s ring, although around the edges 
they were gray. Her face was long and pale, and there 
was a look about her as if she were thinking of something 
she did n’t take the trouble to say. 

“I think, little Edda,” Aunt Caroline said after they 
had looked long at each other, “that you are going to be 
One-in-a-thousand.” 

“What ma’am asked Edda shyly. She had not the 
least idea what her aunt meant. 

“One-in-a-thousand, Edda — one little girl out of a 
thousand little girls to hear what I used to hear and see 
what I used to see in this garden.” 

Edda looked about her, thinking there would hardly 
be room for a thousand little girls in that garden, and not 
feeling at all sure that she would like that many play- 


EDDA AND THE OAK ii 

mates. But she saw no little girls — only hollyhocks in 
rows, tall red lilies in companies, lobelia bluer than the 
sky, lady-slippers and sweet peas in lovely colors, high 
hedges and great trees. Best of all the trees was an oak, 
larger than any tree Edda had ever seen, which shed a 
circle of shade and made a deep whispering as the wind 
rustled it. 

Although her eyes rested on it for the first time, it 
was so beautiful that it seemed as if she had seen it every 
day of her life. To become acquainted with a tree cer- 
tainly is a different sort of thing from becoming 
acquainted with a grandmother, yet this pleasant, old tree 
made a happy feeling come into Edda’s heart very much 
like that she had had when she first felt her grandmother’s 
arms around her. 

Then, as she looked and smiled at the tree, she saw — 
and to see it made her heart beat fast as fast — that a little 
way below where the branches reached out, there was a 
face. It was a bark face, you understand, a tree-trunk 
face; and whether it was laughing or crying Edda could 
not tell. All she could make out was that it was screwed 
up, and had cross wrinkles around its mouth, and kind 
wrinkles on its forehead, and a nose that sprawled over 


12 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


the cheeks, and no ears at all — an old-young, wise-silly 
kind of a face that made Edda feel queer all over. 

She pointed to the face. “Oh, Aunt Caroline, see!’^ 

The green in Aunt Caroline’s eyes grew greener, and 
her voice when she spoke seemed almost like the whisper- 
ing of the oak. 

“It is just as I thought,” she said. “You are One-in- 
a-thousand, little Edda. You ’ve seen the face in the 
oak! Many and many a person have I brought to this 
garden to see if they ’d notice the face, but though they 
looked straight at it they did not see it. But you, having 
seen it, shall see and hear things that you never so much 
as dreamed of. Listen !” 

She held up her long, white finger as a sign for Edda 
to keep very quiet. And as Edda listened, the whispering 
of the tree became words, only Edda could not quite make 
them out; and the shadows in the little water-lily pond 
began to take shape, as if lovely little creatures were mov- 
ing beneath the water. A squirrel sitting on a branch of 
the oak began laughing as if he were a mocking boy; and 
a sad-faced crow on the fence sighed as if he were sorrow- 
ing over the wicked squirrel. A woodpecker stopped 
half-way up a slender linden tree to nod at Edda three 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


13 


times; and in the grass at her feet, where a fairy ring of 
toadstools grew, some elfish things, no bigger than a 
sparrow, crept out on their hands and knees and grinned 
at her. 

A hundred little sounds she had not heard before 



THE OLD OAK 


were in her ears, and she could see colors on the leaves and 
in the grass which she had not noticed at all until then. 
It all was so wonderful that she could n’t speak a word. 


4 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


but would clasp her hands together, and sit as still as a 
stone, listening and looking. 

Just then a bell sounded from within the house. 

“The supper bell !” cried Aunt Caroline with a sharp 
little laugh, and at that the sounds died, the elves slunk 
beneath the toadstools, the woodpecker hopped into a hole 
in the tree, the squirrel whisked out of sight, the crow 
flew off, and the beautiful shapes stirring in the lily pond 
became mere shadows. 

“They are all gone !” wailed Edda. “Aunt Caroline, 
they are gone !” 

“Hush,” whispered Aunt Caroline, taking Edda by 
the hand and leading her toward the house. “They will 
come back, little One-in-a-thousand. But, mind you, not 
if you tell any one what you have seen. Promise me 
you ’ll not tell.” 

So Edda promised, and went with her aunt into the 
house to have supper with grandmother. 


CHAPTER II 


A lthough Edda had eaten many, many meals 
in her life, she never had enjoyed one as much as 
she did that first supper at her grandmother’s 
house. At her city home she was not allowed at the table 
for the evening meal, because then it was dinner that 
was served, with meat and dessert, which were much too 
hearty for a little girl who must soon go to bed. So she 
had her bread and butter and milk and jam in the sitting- 
room with her mamma; and although she was allowed to 
wait up for her papa, and to sit on his knee for ten 
minutes at least, she had to say good-night right after- 
ward, even though it might still be daylight. 

But here at grandmother’s no one was saying a word 
about bed. She was given white bread with raisins in it, 
and honey and milk, cold chicken and tea cakes, and every 
few minutes some one said: 

‘‘Have some more of something, Edda, child, do!” 
From where Edda sat she could see the old oak, and 


15 


i6 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


not far from it, the lily pond. As the sun dropped lower 
and lower in the west, the pond took on lovely colors — 
pink and soft green, then wild-drifting red, and after that 
blues that were almost greens. Then the light died out 
and the pond was like a great pearl; and at last it was 
dark, with a small shining light, like a fairy lantern, mov- 
ing over it. 

‘^See! See!” cried Edda. “What is thatT’ 

Grandmother looked. 

“That ’s a firefly, child.” 

“Why does it move to and fro and to and fro^?” 

“It ’s perched at the bow of the fairy queen’s boat, 
and is lighting her across the pond,” answered Aunt 
Caroline. 

“My dear,” grandmother said, “you must n’t put 
nonsense in the child’s head. You are so serious that she 
will believe you. Why should n’t it fly back and forth, 
Edda? I dare say it likes the dampness about the pond.” 

“As for the fairy queen,” went on Aunt Caroline, 
“her name is Goldheart, and she is a water fairy who lives 
in the house at the end of the water-lily stem. There are 
little stairs inside of the stem, and she goes down them to 
her home.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


17 


Grandmother laughed and told Edda she must n't 
believe all her Aunt Caroline said. 

“She always was a great hand at telling fairy tales,” 
she said. 

Out of doors it was growing darker and darker, but 
still no one spoke the word Edda disliked more than any 
other in the language — the word “bed.” Instead, Aunt 
Caroline said : 

“We can see the fireflies even better from the upper 
windows, I think.” 

So the three went up the shining stairs, past the 

pictures on the wall, past a great window with many little 

panes through which the stars were shining, until they 

came to a room where the honeysuckle looked in at the 

window. There was a small bed with rose-sprigged 

muslin curtains in this room and a low dressing-table 

hung with the rose-sprigged muslin, and a desk where 

a little girl could write letters, and a toy cradle for 

Adelaide Alice the doll. No sooner did Edda see 

the bed with the curtains than she thought that the best 

thing that could happen would be to curl up in it 

and go to sleep. Grandmother and Aunt Caroline 

seemed to think so too, so before she really knew what 

2 


i8 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


was happening, her day clothes were off and her long 
white nightgown was on, her head was on the pillow, and 
grandmother and Aunt Caroline were kissing her good- 
night. 

At home she had not liked to be left alone. Sleeping 
as she did in the inner room of the Top Elat, the only 
noises she heard were other people working in their 
kitchens or playing pianos, or Toby’s dog crying for its 
supper; and there was nothing to see out of the window 
but the whitewashed wall on the other side of the court. 
But here, in her new room, she could hear the whispering 
of the trees, the piping of a cricket, and a sort of deep, 
beautiful breathing as if the night itself were drawing 
breath. 

The great oak reached up to her window and away 
beyond it, so that it was almost as if she were a bird and 
were living in a tree. She could hear the birds making 
sleepy noises, and she made them too, and played she 
was a bird. 

After a time she stopped playing she was a bird, and 
got to thinking about her mamma — her dear mamma who 
was so very — far — away — so — far — dear — mam — 

The little thoughts went out as bubbles go out — they 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


19 

shone for a moment in Edda’s brain, broke prettily, and 
were no more. She was asleep. 

No doubt she would have slept all night had not the 
moon arisen. But it was so bright a moon that when once 
it began shining in at Edda’s window her eyelids fluttered 
like butterfly wings, and at last flew wide open. At once 
she knew she was in a strange place, but for a second or 
two she was not quite sure what the place was. She 
felt around the bed with her hands, and finding nothing 
that would help to tell her, she sat up and looked about 
her. The moonshine allowed her to see the room as clear 
as clear. 

“I remember now,” she said aloud; “I remember 
everything.” 

“You remember everything!” mocked a dozen gay, 
naughty little voices. “How can you remember every- 
thing when you don’t know everything*?” 

“Why — why — ” gasped Edda, and then said no 
more because what she saw was so very strange. 

Sitting on the window-sill in the moonlight, and 
gaily swinging their wee legs, were the elfish creatures 
she had seen that afternoon peeping from under the 
toadstools. 


20 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


“Oh, it’s you!” she cried. “How did you get up 

here 

“Climbed the honeysuckle trellis, of course,” said 
they, speaking all together. Indeed, had they not all 
spoken at once Edda could hardly have heard them, so 
small were their voices. As it was, she had to lean for- 
ward to make out what they were saying. 

“What do you want?” she asked. 

“To surprise you, of course. Don’t you like sur- 
prise parties?” 

“I ’ve never had one, you funny little things. And 
anyway, I would n’t choose to have one in the middle of 
the night. Why do you swing your legs so hard?” 

“We ’re keeping time to the cricket’s music. He ’s 
been fiddling for us all night. He wanted to get up a 
dance, but the fairies had the hall as usual. They ’re 
a piggish set.” 

“What makes you all speak together? And how can 
you all say naughty things at the same time? Do you all 
feel naughty at once?” 

“We ’re everything at the same time. It keeps 
things from getting mixed up. It ’s been so from the 
beginning.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


21 


‘‘When was the beginning?” 

“Oh, a long, long way back. We Te so old it wears 
us out to think of it. We Ve seen the old oak grow from 
a little tree to a big tree, and the house grow from a little 
house to a big house, and — ” 

“Why, you fib- tellers! Houses don’t grow like 
trees.” 

“That ’s all you know about it ! This house has 
grown and grown.” 

“Perhaps you mean that grandmother has built on 
more rooms.” 

“That may be the way you say it, but we say it has 
grown.” 

“Do you come in the house every night?” 

“Oh, not every night. Sometimes we go to the dairy 
and sour the milk; sometimes we ride on the back of the 
six-toed cat and make her take us miles and miles; and 
once we got inside the clock — your grandmother had left 
the door open — and made it go slow so that she missed her 
train the next morning. Another time we got on the well- 
rope and they could n’t haul up the bucket; and often we 
dance on your grandmother’s counterpane and she has 
dreams.” 


22 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


“That does n’t seem a very kind or polite way to 
treat such a dear person as my grandmother!” 

Edda was not at all pleased with these kicking, 
squirming little creatures or with the way they talked. 

But they only laughed at her and whispered among 
themselves. Then, the next thing she knew, they had 
leaped down from the window-sill and were scampering 
toward her bed. They swung themselves up by way of 
the knitted coverlid, and then took the fringe and tickled 
Edda’s face with it. They pulled her hair and pinched 
her ears. She did n’t know whether to laugh at them, 
they were so tiny and mean, or to scold them and brush 
them out of the way. 

She tried the scolding after a time, but they only 
laughed and laughed with a dry, rasping sound like dead 
grasses blowing in the wind. Then she tried to brush 
them away, but that only made them swing out in the air 
as spiders swing from the ends of their webs. Back and 
forth they went, high and low, swinging and laughing in 
their hateful way, now and then coming close enough to 
tweak at Edda’s turned-up nose, or tickle her chin, or 
poke their sharp-pointed shoes in her dimples. 

“You are mean, mean little things,” she cried at 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


23 


length, springing out of bed, ‘and I ’m going to ’tend 
to you — so there!” 

At this the elves gave a shriek of laughter, and as 
Edda jumped out of bed they made a dash for the 
window, climbed up by way of the curtain cord, 
scrambled over the ledge, and began to clamber down the 
trellis. Edda was so vexed by this time that any one 
seeing her might have thought one of the trixy creatures 
nad somehow got into her heart. Her face was red, and 
her eyes were shining with anger. 

As she saw the teasing little creatures disappear 
down the trellis, and knew they were going to get away 
from her before she had a chance to get back at them for 
the way they had acted, she took her shoes and threw 
them, one after the other, at the flying elves. A faint gust 
of laughter came back to her, by which she knew she had 
not hit them. So, without waiting to think, and angrier 
than ever, she followed them out of the window. 

Fortunately the trellis was a strong one, and the 
honeysuckle vine was old and tough, so it was no very 
hard task to let herself down, hand below hand. Being 
with bare feet made it all the easier, for her stout little 
toes clung hard to wires and vines. 


24 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


The moon was shining wonderfully, and once, when 
Edda, half-way down the trellis, looked over her shoulder, 
she saw the garden lying in shimmering blue, as if soft 
veils had been dropped from the sky to where the dew- 
drops glistened in the grass. 

At the sight of all that loveliness Edda forgot about 
being angry. 

“What a silly I am !” she said aloud. “I ought to be 
ashamed of myself. But I ’ll go on down and hnd my 
shoes, now I ’m started, and then go back to bed.” 

“If you don’t go to bed until you get back your shoes, 
miss, you ’ll be up some time, I can tell you that.” 

The voice came from the oak tree, and looking over 
at it Edda saw the same squirrel she had noticed in the 
afternoon. He was stroking his whiskers and smiling in 
a way that showed his pointed teeth. 

“I thought squirrels slept at night,” Edda said, not 
meaning to be rude, but speaking out the first thought 
that came to her mind. 

“And I thought that little girls slept at night,” re- 
torted Bushy Tail. 

“If you mean me,” Edda replied, “I always have 
slept at night until now.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


25 


“I dare say you ’ve done a deal of sleeping in your 
time, miss. I noticed to-day when I saw you in the garden 
that you were a sleepy-looking child.” 

He said this in such a disagreeable tone of voice that 
Edda, to get as far away from him as possible, scrambled 
down the rest of the trellis. She gave a little shiver as 
her feet sank in the chilly, dew-covered grass, and wailed, 
‘‘Oh, oh, I want my shoes !” 

“I say it ’s.a cruel thing, the way that child is being 
treated,” exclaimed a queer voice above her head. “She ’s 
fallen out of the nest, that’s evident! Why doesn’t 
some one teach her how to fly back^?” 

Edda looked up and saw that the trunk-face of the 
oak tree was just above her head, and that the friendly 
woodpecker who had nodded at her so pleasantly that 
afternoon was looking out of the mouth of the face. 

“Oh, is that where you live?” Edda called up. 

“It ’s my summer home, child,” answered the wood- 
pecker kindly. “My winter home is in an oleander tree 
on the banks of the Indian River. And where is your 
winter home, if I may ask?” 

“In the Top Flat,” Edda told him. 

“Well, I ’m sorry about your accident. Won’t you 


26 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


try to fly up here and spend the rest of the night with my 
wife and the babies and myself? It ’s odd your mother 
does n’t come, but I suppose she has n’t noticed that 
you ’ve fallen out of the nest. She ’ll be looking for you 
the first thing in the morning when she goes worming.’^ 

“Worming?” repeated Edda wonderingly. 

“Why yes, child, looking for worms, of course. You 
did n’t think the worms came and crawled into the nest, 
begging to be eaten, did you?” 

“We don’t eat worms,” protested Edda. 

“You don’t!” cried Red Top in astonishment. 
“What do you eat, then?” 

“Ever so many kinds of things. I could n’t begin to 
think of all of them — currant jelly, and oatmeal porridge, 
and baked sweet potatoes with sugar, and pudding with 
whipped cream, and — and other things.” 

“Well ! And where does she pick up all those things, 
please?” 

“She does n’t pick them up. She orders them at the 
market.” 

“And has n’t she taught you to fly?” 

“We don’t fly in our family,” Edna said, rather 
ashamed of the fact. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


27 


“Well, that ’s too bad,” said Red Top sympatheti- 
cally. “I Ve often said to my wife, ‘My dear, what 
would we do if we could n’t fly?’ And she never has 
been able to answer my question. And so, poor little 
girl, you really can’t see your way to getting up here?” 

“I ’m afraid not, thank you. And anyway, I ’ve got 
to look for my shoes.” 

“Those are the things you wear on your feet, are n’t 
they? I ’ve noticed human beings wearing those clumsy 
things. It must be a great nuisance to have them come 
off. Mine are made right on me, and I find it very 
convenient.” 

“Well, I ’ve lost mine,” sighed Edda, “though it ’s 
my own fault. I was naughty and cross and threw them 
after those bad, bad — ” 

“There they go now!” shrilled the woodpecker. 
“Oh, why, why did n’t they invite me?” 

A cloud of dust arose in the garden path, and Edda 
heard the shouting of many little voices. 

“Get out of the road, child,” warned the woodpecker, 
“or you ’ll be run over.” 

Two bright lights like the eyes of a wild beast shone 
through the dust, and as they drew nearer, Edda saw that 


28 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


they were headlights on one of her shoes, which had been 
turned into an automobile by the clever elves. It was 
now ripping down the garden path at such a rate that as 
it swept around the corner it tipped up so that it ran on 
two wheels. The tonneau was overflowing with the little 
creatures who had caused Edda all her trouble. 

She had just stepped out in the path to look after 
the vanishing machine when once more the woodpecker 
shrieked to her to look out. Edda had only time to jump 
in the pansy patch when the second shoe, which had also 
been made into a touring car and was loaded down with 
rowdy elves, went whirling by after the first machine. 

Red Top had come out of his doorway and clung to 
the tree-trunk and, striking his beak angrily against the 
tree, complained : 

“I ought to have been asked, I certainly ought! 
I have a dull time, that’s what I do! Grubbing for 
worms early and late for the family is n’t as funny as 
it sounds.” 

“And are you dreadfully tired*?” asked Edda, feel- 
ing very sorry for him. 

“Tired? Yes, I’m tired of working and having no 
fun. What I need is fun. I want to go off for a good 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


29 

time. Come along, little girl, and go with me. It ’s no 
use trying to have a good time alone.” 

“You ’re very kind to ask me,” Edda said, bowing, 
“but we ’re so different. You have wings and I have n’t. 
I ’m a hundred times bigger than you — ” 

The woodpecker interrupted her. “I promise 
solemnly not to use my wings, human child, if you ’ll get 
yourself down into some sort of a sensible size — about 
my size, say.” 

“That would be fun, dear woodpecker, but please 
tell me how I can do it. I ’ve grown up to be this big 
and I can’t ungrow, can T^” 

“Indeed you can, child. I know a magician who is 
wiser and more powerful than any other magician that 
ever lived. Will you come with me to see himT’ 

“Is he very far away, woodpecker*? I ’m not used to 
walking with bare feet; and I don’t think it nice to go 
about in my nightdress. Besides, I ’m getting cold, you 
know. There are little cold feelings running up and 
down my back.” 

“I should seriously advise you to wear feathers,” 
said Red Top. “But come ! We shall see what the wisest 
of magicians can do for us.” 


30 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


At that he hopped down on to the ground, and 
remembering his promise that he would not use his wings, 
merrily bobbed up and down the garden paths before 
Edda, until they came to a grape arbor. The grape 
flowers were in bloom, and a delicious odor came floating 
out; within, all was mioonshine, but it was several 
moments before Edda could see clearly enough to make 
out that a throne stood at the far end, and on it was the 
crow she had seen the day before. He had one wing 
thrown out in such a way that it looked as if he were 
wrapped in a black coat, and he wore a frown which gave 
him a look of great wisdom. The woodpecker bowed until 
his top-knot brushed the dust. 

‘‘Help, master!” he cried. 

“Who asks for my help?” demanded the crow in a 
deep voice. 

“I, Red Top the woodpecker, always your faithful 
servant.” 

“Speak, woodpecker. What is thy desire?” 

“This human child, O Black Master, wishes to 
become the size of the garden creatures.” 

“Is this true, human child?” demanded the crow. 
He turned his eyes upon her, and it seemed as if he were 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


31 


trying to look her through. Edda knew in her heart of 
hearts that she rather liked herself the way she was, but 
she hated to disappoint the woodpecker, so she said : 

“Please, Black Master, make me the size of Red 
Top, the good woodpecker.” 

“Your deed be upon your head!” cried the crow. 
And at that he arose and spread out his wings until he 
looked — at least to Edda — almost as large as an eagle. 
Then, flapping his wings back and forth and making a 
great noise and a darkness, he shouted : 

“Willo, wallo, wello, wink, 

Shrivel, mortal child, and shrink 
Faster than a cat can wink. 

Willo, wallo, wello, wink!” 

After he had gone through this once he cried, “And 
now, once more, all together.” So Edda and the wood- 
pecker joined their voices with his. 

“Yet a third time,” he commanded. 

At that, the squirrel, who had suddenly appeared, 
and who seemed to think the whole thing very amusing, 
joined in with his sharp, disagreeable voice. 

While all this was going on, Edda had the strangest 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


32 

sort of feelings. She found herself growing smaller and 
smaller until, by the time they were all quiet again, she 
was no taller than the woodpecker. Indeed, she had to 
look up to see the end of his beautiful top-knot. 

“I ’m just as cold as ever,” she whispered to the 
woodpecker. “You ’d think I ’d be warmer, now there 
is n’t so much of me to be cold.” 

“Shall it be feathers?” the woodpecker whispered 
back. “While we ’re asking for something, we may as 
well get the best.” 

“Oh, no, no, dear Red Top, not feathers ! I could n’t 
change them, and I ’m used to making changes, you 
know.” 

“Just as you please, of course, but I will say this for 
feathers — ” 

“Don’t !” Edda said, shaking her head. “No feathers 
for me.” 

“Very well, then.” And once more bowing before 
the crow he said, “O Black Master, one more wish 
have I.” 

“Speak, then, and freely.” 

“Cover this human child with clothes after the fash- 
ion of her kind, I pray you.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


33 


“Thou makest it hard for me, O woodpecker, for 
have not her kind countless fashions Which one does 
she choose T’ 

Edda was about to ask for a pink dress and a hat 
with rosebuds, such as her mamma had made for her, when 
the woodpecker broke in with “Dress her like a brown 
leaf, so that the hunters won’t shoot her.” 

And at that the crow once more spread his wings and 
sang : 

“Uppery, duppery, dippery, down, 

Clothe this human child in brown, — 

Shoes and hat and coat and gown. 

Uppery, duppery, dippery, down.” 

And the next moment there she stood, warmly and 
well clad from her pointed russet shoes to the little round 
leather cap above her curls. 

“Have I a third wish. Black Master?” inquired the 
woodpecker, evidently having something in mind which 
he desired for himself. 

“Thou knowest, O woodpecker, that each garden 
creature may ask of me three favors a month. Speak 
then — but it is the last wish to be granted until next full 

5J 


moon. 


34 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


But at that Edda cried : 

“Oh, please, please, dear woodpecker, do not use up 
your last wish!” 

“And why not, pray?” asked the woodpecker, 
reprovingly. 

“Keep it to wish me back with,” the little girl 
begged. “I shan’t want to stay this size always. My 
mamma never would know me the way I am now. Please, 
please, dear Red Top!” 

The woodpecker nodded his head kindly. 

“You really are such a very dear child,” he 
responded, “that I can refuse you nothing. Black 
Master, I hold my third wish for the future.” 

And he and Edda, with many thanks, backed from 
the arbor. Now that she was smaller than the squirrel 
he seemed to be rather a terrible beast, but Edda tried not 
to be afraid of him. He had nothing to say to her, but 
he looked at her from the corner of his eye, meantime 
stroking his whiskers and acting as if he were thinking of 
something very disagreeable. 

She was on the point of asking him what the matter 
really was, and why he did not like her, when a great 
clamor arose, made by the returning automobiles. As 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


35 


they came racing back they looked so huge to Edda, tiny 
as she now was, that it seemed impossible thev had once 
been her shoes. 

She hoped the elves would drive by without seeing 
her ; but this was not to be. All in brown though she was, 
they caught sight of her, and brought the machines to a 
standstill, while the chauffeurs took off their glasses to 
take a closer look at her. 

“Come,” they all called, beckoning to her, “come, 
Edda and Red Top ! Have a ride ! We ’re off for a race 
around the garden, and we ’re to call on the fairy queen.” 

The woodpecker accepted the invitation without a 
moment’s delay. 

“Come along,” he said to Edda, pulling at her sleeve 
with his beak. “It ’s your only chance ! You may never 
have an automobile ride again.” 

“Pooh!” said Edda, “I’ve had many of them 
already.” 

“Not in an automobile like these,” he insisted, which 
was, of course, quite true. 

She still held back, but no one paid any attention to 
that. They hustled and bustled her, and the first thing 
she knew she was packed in with the noisy little elves. 


36 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


with the woodpecker on one side, and, to her disgust, with 
the squirrel on the other. 

“To the fairy queen’s!” the others shouted, while 
Edda, shy and ashamed, sat among them, holding her 
breath as the machine ripped through ant hills, plunged 
around the corners, and brought up at last by the water- 
lily pond. 


CHAPTER III 


A S the shoe-automobile swung up to the edge of 
Water-Lily Pond the fireflies that had kindly 
acted as lamps jumped down to help the company 
find its way to the flatboats which lay moored beneath 
the sedges. To be sure, the moon was shining brightly, 
but the elves and their friends were creeping along 
beneath the shrubbery, and it was shadowy there. 

One of the elves — a long, thin fellow named Whist 
— led the way, crying to them in his dry little voice, 
‘'Come on, come on !” 

Red Top offered a wing to help Edda along, and he 
handed her into one of the boats. Edda thought it was 
stretching a point to call them boats. They were really 
rafts, made of great mullen leaves, without so much as 
a thread to hold to. 

"I ’ll be slipping off if I ’m not careful,”- thought the 
little girl, “and then no one ever would know what 
became of me. If I drowned and my body was washed 
37 


38 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


ashore, probably no one would ever see it — I ’m so small. 
They ’d think it was a sparrow that had been killed in a 
thunder storm.” 

But no one had any intention of letting her fall into 
the water, it appeared. The elves sat all about her, the 
woodpecker spread one wing in back of her in a protect- 
ing way, and the squirrel hunched up against her, now 
and then poking her disagreeably in the ribs. The moon 
shone so wonderfully that as Edda looked up it almost 
seemed as if clouds of brightness were tumbling down, 
one after the other, like scarfs of silver. A few stars 
managed to make themselves seen above all the shine and 
glory, but they had hard work to attract any attention in 
such moonlight as that. 

“Night seems to be even nicer than day,” said 
Edda to Whist. “I believe you have more sense than 
I have. It ’s really better to sleep daytimes and play 
at night.” 

But if there was anything in which the elves did not 
believe it was “sense,” and at the word they so laughed, 
and fell against each other, and poked at little Edda’s 
ribs, and tickled her with feathery grasses, that she almost 
cried. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


39 


“I don’t see how you can bear to be so bad !” she said, 
hating to speak out like that to their faces, but not know- 
ing what else to do. 

At this they began singing at the top of their voices : 

‘'We like to be bad, ho hay, ho hay! 

We ’re glad we are bad, alway, alway ! 

We are glad and bad and mad all day ! 

Ho hay, ho ha)^ he ho hay!” 

All this made Edda feel very lonely. Being by her- 
self in the Top Flat with only Bubbles and Adelaide 
Alice was nothing to being in a crowd of creatures who 
jeered and mocked her, and put her off to one side as if 
she were a silly goose ! But for the wing of the wood- 
pecker, who now crept a bit closer, she would have wept 
into her handkerchief. It was a mercy, when one came 
to think of it, that the crow had not forgotten to give her 
a handkerchief when he was fitting her out so quickly in 
her present clothes. She had wondered if he had remem- 
bered, and had put her hand in the pocket of her blouse 
to see. There it was, sure enough. Edda decided that 
the crow must be a grown-up being, for grown-ups always 
were in a state of mind about handkerchiefs. It seemed 


40 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


to Edda that she never started to go anywhere, but some 
one called after her: 

“Have you a clean pocket handkerchief 

Well, she had one, and so she was at liberty to cry 
if she thought best. Yet how much good could a wee 
rag of that size do, she wondered. She was almost 
tempted to cry to see what size her tears would be, and 
she thought it odd that things should still look so dread- 
fully small to her, when her eyes, as well as the rest of 
her body, had been made as tiny as possible. 

“I suppose my eyes are about the size of pin points,” 
she thought; and remembered with a sigh that she used 
to feel pleased when she heard folks say : 

“What large eyes that little girl has!” 

While she was doing all this thinking the elves, 
who found that she was not so easy to tease as they had 
thought she would be, were chattering away among them- 
selves. She tried to make out what they were saying, but 
they seemed not to be talking English at all, but to be 
speaking some other tongue that grumbled and growled 
deep in their throats, almost like the croaking of frogs. 

“It’s the old tongue,” whispered Red Top to her. 
“They are as old as the Earth, and they speak words no 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


41 

bird or human can understand. I think it sounds as if 
they were choking on worms.” 

“Here we are!” cried Whist. “We ’re at the water- 
gate of the palace.” 

Edda sat still for a moment, with little thrills run- 
ning all over her. They really were at the palace of the 
fairy queen! Many a time she had dreamed of hearing 
such words as these, and something in her heart told her 
that all little girls dreamed of such things. But here she 
really was, she, Edda, at the very gate, and she was not 
asleep at all, but was wide, wide awake, though it was 
the middle of the night! 

They all began to get off the boats, and Edda 
crowded along with the others. Two grasshoppers, with 
glittering chains about their necks, held the planks on 
which they walked. Edda expected, of course, to step on 
land, but when she could look about her she saw that she 
was walking on to the white leaf of a great water-lily. 
She had noticed the beautiful odor that filled the air, but 
had not taken time to think what it meant. All was so 
wonderful this night that the scent might indeed have 
been the scent of the moonshine itself. But now she knew 
that it was the water-lily, and as she put her tiny feet on 


42 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


the white petal she seemed to tread on perfumed white 
velvet. Above her rose the other leaves of the great 
flower, reaching up and up, and Edda could see little 
veins of pink and purple running through them, and with 
her tiny eyes, which saw so much more than her larger 
human eyes had been able to see, she noticed that the 
whiteness shone almost like crystal. The elves seemed 
to fumble into the heart of the flower, like bees, and Edda 
did as they did. In a moment or two she found herself 
at the top of a flight of pale green stairs, made of some- 
thing that looked like glass. The stairs twisted and 
turned and turned and twisted, and she remembered what 
she had heard said about the fairy queen living down in 
the pond at the foot of a water-lily stem. Her little heart 
beat like a watch — whizzed and tripped and pounded — 
as she ran down the stairs with all the others. 

She found herself in a long green hall of glass, and 
through the walls she could see out into the pond, where 
queer little animals were floating, and grasses with bell- 
shaped flowers were nodding, and little soft things, that 
might have been living creatures or might have been 
weeds, swayed back and forth. Edda was so full of 
wonder she could not keep her mouth shut. She knew it 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


43 


was not nice to go around with her mouth open, and she 
tried to press her lips together, but they kept flying apart 
in spite of all she could do. 

The elves were behaving better than Edda had 
thought possible. It seemed now that they had come 
upon some sort of an errand. They were pushing Whist 
forward and telling him that he was the one who must do 
the talking, and were telling Bushy Tail the squirrel and 
Red Top the woodpecker that they must go with Whist 
to give him their help. There were rows of beetles, 
dressed in shining green, with stars in their coats, stand- 
ing in solemn line along each side of the hall, and they 
told the elves to make themselves into a proper proces- 
sion. This they did, and two by two all of them marched 
along, Edda following with Red Top, behind Whist and 
Bushy Tail, until they came into a great chamber with an 
arching roof, where, at the far end, on a little glittering 
throne of glass, with candles burning all about her and 
wee golden flowers at her feet, sat Goldheart, queen of 
all the fairies. 

Whist went forward and knelt before her throne. 
The queen raised a little golden wand and said : 

‘‘Speak, elf!” 


44 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


Whist stammered and choked with embarrassment, 
but the queen smiled upon him kindly, and after a time 
he made bold to say that he had come to her with a com- 
plaint from all the elves. 

“O queen,” he said, “you know that when the 
garden creatures built the Moonlight Dancing Hall that 
it was agreed that we should have it turn and turn about.” 

“True, elf.” 

“And last night you were dancing in it, O queen, and 
now again to-night it is to be yours ! And this, surely, is 
the finest night of the whole summer. We are the old, 
old people, but never have we seen a finer night. We are 
moved to dance. Our heels are tickling. Moreover, we 
have with us a human child made down into convenient 
size, and we wish to dance with her.” 

“Indeed, honored elf,” said the queen in a voice 
which sounded to Edda like the chiming of little bells, 
“there is some mistake here. We fairies were not at the 
Moonlight Dancing Hall last night. We knew that it 
was your night, and we busied ourselves with a regatta 
upon the pond. Our fleet of rose-leaf boats was hurriedly 
finished for the occasion. Ourselves rode alone, drawn 
by fireflies, and followed by barges bearing our maids of 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


45 


honor. About us were our ro5^al guard of goldfish, 
and our makers of songs. We did not go near the 
dance hall.” 

Up to this moment the elves, as has been said, be- 
haved themselves very well. But now they forgot all 



QUEEN GOLDHEART IN HER ROSE-LEAF BOAT 


about being in the royal presence and broke into a shock- 
ing clamor and chattering. The queen rose on her throne 
to command silence, and her green beetles, who acted as 
men-at-arms, rushed in with staves and dashed about 
among the elves, trying to restore order. Edda thought 


46 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


they all seemed foolish enough, but the scene grew a 
thousand times more confused when out of little jeweled 
doors leading to other chambers rushed a whole tribe of 
fairy folk. Glittering and swift as humming birds, they 
spun round and round, making such a noise that if a 
thousand crickets and as many more grasshoppers had all 
joined together it could not have been worse. Edda had 
to put her hands to the side of her head, for all these 
sharp little high noises made pains come into her human 
ears, which were made for hearing sounds of a different 
sort. Indeed, some of the noises were so fine and high 
that if she had not been made over by the crow she never 
could have heard them at all. 

Moreover, something was rising in her heart. She 
could not have given it a name. She did not know what 
it was. But it was a sort of power — and a knowing that 
she had the power — to make both elves and fairies obey 
her. So at last, when she could endure the confusion no 
longer, she sprang upon the steps of the throne and at the 
top of her voice cried : 

“Silence!” 

It was a word her mamma had sometimes used when 
Edda grew too boisterous. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


47 

There was something in the human tone of her voice 
which made every creature in the room listen. 

“Her Majesty wishes to speak,” said Edda with 
great dignity. And turning to the queen, and bowing 
low, she said: “Speak, O queen!” 

The queen swept forward to the very edge of the 
dais, and her sweet voice seemed to trickle down the hall 
as water trickles over pebbles. 

“Something very strange has happened,” she said, 
“and we must all be patient until we have learned what 
it is. I had supposed there was no creature in all the 
garden whom I did not know, from the kind woman with 
the green eyes to the horned snail behind the garden 
house. Yet it seems that not one but many strangers are 
among us. They have taken our hall ; they have danced 
and made merry there; they have masqueraded as the 
Little People. But fear not, I shall find out these 
intruders and learn by what right they come where they 
are not invited. Meantime, elves, I bid you and your 
guests to our ball to-night. As for the guest of honor, that 
shall be this human child.” 

She motioned for Edda to approach, and Edda knelt 
at her feet. 


48 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


“How comes it, O child, that you are of so agreeable 
a size? Fairies have stolen human children before now, 
but they always were in a terrible fume about their being 
so large and clumsy. You, however, are as small and 
neat as any fairy of us all.” 

“I ’m only made small for a very little while, dear 
queen,” Edda replied. “I should n’t like to stay this way 
very long, so if you are really going to have a ball I hope 
it may be soon, for I shall soon be going back into my own 
self again.” 

The queen raised a pair of gold lorgnettes and 
looked at Edda long and hard. 

“Come,” she said, “you seem an interesting child. 
Are you?” 

“I don’t know,” said Edda in rather a silly way. 
There were hundreds of little creatures listening, and 
she could hear the elves giggling at the question. 

“Don’t you interest yourself?” asked the queen. 

Edda nodded, and felt herself blushing redder and 
redder. 

“Then you ’ll probably interest me. Come, child, 
walk with me, and tell me all the story of your life.” 

“Oh, are we going on a very long walk?” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


49 


“Only into the next room; but there ’ll be plenty of 
time for you to tell me everything, I dare say. I must see 
you properly clothed, you know.” 

She held out her hand to Edda and led the way from 
the room. Behind them came the maids of honor, and 
before them stalked two shining beetles, who swung wide 
the shining doors. They had entered Goldheart’s bed- 
room, and Edda saw, standing on a platform in the center 
of the room, a tiny bed of green glass with four high bed 
posts and a canopy of changeable blue and green silk. 

“And now,” said the queen kindly, “choose your own 
frock, human child, and while you are being dressed you 
must tell me everything you know.” 

It seemed quite too bad that Edda should have to 
answer questions when she was burning to ask them, but 
though there never had been any fairy queens at the Top 
Flat she had been told enough about them to know that 
they must be obeyed. Besides, she really was one of the 
best-meaning children in the world, and was in the habit 
of obeying. So she talked as hard and as fast as she could, 
and it ’s really a fact that, by talking so fast that her 
tongue ached, she was able, by the time the maids had 
clothed her in a moonlight-blue satin, hung over with 


50 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


threads of silver delicate as cobwebs, to tell Goldheart 
almost everything there was to tell about herself. 

“You are both good and beautiful,” said the queen, 
as if that settled it forever, “and if I have my way you 
shall always live with me here in my Palace-beneath-the- 
Pond, and be my friend.” 

At this a great fear came up in Edda’s heart. 
Beautiful as the fairies were she knew they could never 
take the place of her own dear people, and she was about 
to say so when there came a terrible outcry from the throne 
room. 

The doors were thrown open violently and a beetle 
put in his head. 

“The strangers, your Majesty !” he shrieked. “They 
are at the water-gate! There is an attack!” 

“Arm yourself! Arm yourself, O queen!” cried the 
maids of honor as they ran to bring breastplate and 
helmet. But the queen waved them aside and with Edda 
hastened to the outer room. 

The sight Edda saw there was not soon to be for- 
gotten. Both elves and fairies were moving back against 
the walls of the hall as a great company of little creatures 
marched in. They were somewhat taller than either the 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


51 


water fairies or the elves, and were clad in gray and green. 
Some of them were so old their whiskers hung to their 
knees, but all looked strong and fierce and proud. At 
their head was a young fairy prince, slender and beautiful. 

Goldheart went forward, hand in hand with Edda. 

“Speak, O strangers!” she cried. “I would know 
your errand and your name. If you are guests, you are 
welcome; if you are foes, let me know why.” 

The prince bowed low. 

“Goldheart, queen of the water fairies,” he said, “I 
am prince of the rock fairies; and I have journeyed far to 
do you honor.” 

“But was it you, sir, who, without our permission, 
danced last night in Moonlight Hall^?” 

“Indeed, queen, no offense was meant. We are twi- 
light people, and we know little of the delight of danc- 
ing by the rays of the moon. Always for us, in all the 
ages, the twilight has been our only time for going 
abroad. As I told you, we have come far — how we came 
is a story you must hear some other time — but we walked 
later than was our custom that we might reach this garden 
and rest. By merest accident we came upon your hall, 
beautifully lighted, trimmed with flowers, and flooded 


52 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


with music. Before we knew it we were within. We 
waited for the true guests to arrive, but they did not come. 
So we danced the night away. And by that token a mar- 
velous thing has happened to us. We have fallen under 
the spell of the moonlight, too, and because of that we are 
all the more your friends. No longer shall folk hear us 
crying in sedges and lone places at close of day — we who 
have been the sad people among the fairies. Now we 
mean to dance and laugh with you — that is, if your Maj- 
esty will give your consent.” 

“We all shall go to the dancing hall,” said the queen. 
“There we shall pass the night away with dancing, and 
singing, and telling tales. And the first tale, prince of 
the rock fairies, shall be yours. To the hall!” 

She raised her scepter, and with one accord all of the 
company turned toward the stairway. Mounting it, 
they came out from the heart of the lily, and plunged 
among flowers and leaves. Then, passing over little 
bridges and along paths, laughing and twirling in the 
moonlight, they came to a place beneath the oak with 
the strange face in its rough bark. 

Here Edda saw something which she never was 
able to quite explain, even to Aunt Caroline. It was a 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


53 


palace made of moonbeams. The high-spanned roof, the 
painted walls, the seats for the musicians, the floor upon 
which they danced, were each and every one of pale blue 
moonbeams. She put out her hand to touch them, and 
they felt solid and sure. 

“It ’s a dream,” she sighed. “It can’t be true.” 

“Nothing is too beautiful to be true,” answered 
Goldheart. “If you believe in it, Edda, it is true. 
Listen!” 

Then Edda, for the first time, heard fairy music, 
which you must know is like the winding of silver horns 
and the blowing of golden trumpets and the falling of 
crystal chains. She was to scent again the fairy odors; 
she was to look at everything through the mystic fairy 
light. Thrice they all marched about the glowing hall, 
and then the prince of the strangers gave his hand to 
Goldheart. An old, old stranger led Edda out into the 
dance. 

He had eyes so old and so kind that they might have 
been little stars set in his head, and when he laughed it 
sounded as if joy were the oldest thing in the world, and 
when he spoke it seemed as if Edda never had done any- 
thing else but listen to him. 


CHAPTER IV 


G OLDHEART took her place on the throne and 
with an imperial gesture begged Prince Pietro 
to seat himself upon her right. Then with the 
loveliest smile imaginable she begged Edda to sit upon 
her left. As for the old, old stranger, whose name, Edda 
had learned, was Flint-spark, he sank down on the steps 
of the throne. The water fairies, the rock fairies, and 
the elves, as many as could, threw themselves upon the 
cushioned benches which ran around the walls of the hall, 
and when these all were occupied, the remainder crowded 
the little flower-hung galleries, or swarmed about the 
rim of the fountain that babbled in the center of 
the hall. 

With a smile the queen raised her wand, and 
instantly the softest and most delicate music came from 
the pipes of the musicians. It was a melody the like of 
which Edda never had heard, and it seemed to be made 
of little low sounds like the growing of grass and the 
54 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


5 ^ 

breathing of bees, the sighs of ladybugs who had lost their 
way home, and the falling of dew on the petals of roses. 
As it went on, Edda felt herself caring less and less about 
turning back into a little girl and more and more content 
to stay in a condition where such things could be seen and 
heard as she now was seeing and hearing. 

When the music had ceased the queen rose and said, 
smilingly: 

‘‘We fairies are a people who love the telling of tales 
as well as we love dancing. Since before man wrote we 
have told our tales, and when man began to write he had, 
for a long time, no better ideas than those we put into his 
head. Indeed, had he kept to our ideas he might have 
been much happier than he is, and laughed much oftener, 
for I and others have noticed that since he stopped listen- 
ing to us, and telling stories of us, he has grown sad, and 
heavy of foot, and he sits into the night holding his head 
in his hands and thinking thoughts which bring wrinkles 
into his face. All day he runs here and there, and worries 
and sweats and rasps, carrying out ideas about work and 
duty. But we are wiser, and the tales we love are still 
tales of joy. To-night we have with us Prince Pietro, 
who has brought hither, from very far, the Twilight 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


56 

People of the Rocks. He has promised to tell us a tale 
of adventure. Dear Prince Pietro, speak, and we listen.” 

The prince rose and bowed low before her; nay, he 
lifted her jeweled hand and kissed it with worship. Then 
he spoke, and his words were those of a great prince. 

‘'O queen of the water fays,” he said, “it is not the 
custom of our royal house to incur the fatigue of telling 
our own tales. Flint-spark, who sits at your feet, is our 
minstrel, skilled in his art, and weighted with the tale of 
all the things that ever we knew or did. Condescend to 
have a harp brought, and we ’ll listen while he sings.” 

At these proud words the face of Goldheart flushed 
slightly, for she felt that she was in the presence of a 
prince loftier and haughtier than herself, but she said 
nothing beyond commanding one of the beetles to bring 
a harp. So with all speed he brought a harp of gold, with 
emeralds shining from its head. When the old minstrel 
had taken it in his hands he lifted up his wrinkled face, 
with his gray hair and beard falling all about him, and 
stood as still as stone until all the creatures in the hall 
were silent. He struck some low, sweet notes upon the 
strings, which made the elves and fays quiver as if a wind 
had blown over them, and began : 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


3 / 


“Deep in the heart of old gray rocks we dwell, 

W e who were old a thousand )'ears ago; 

And we have played about the paths of man, 

And in the twilight filled his heart with dreams. 

Were I to sing until the cruel cock 
Cries out to bring our pleasures to a close, 

I could not tell you all our history; 

Therefore I only sing to tell you how 

e came to leave our rock-home by the sea. 

And ’mong the homes of men a thousand miles 
Go creeping, till we found this guarded spot. 

It chanced one day, the lady of this place. 

The one with emerald eyes and fairy heart, 

^^>nt journeying as far as the green sea. 

And with her went one of your company. 

Your little Fire-in-mist, a restless fay. 

In Mistress Cara’s chatelaine she hid. 

And went with her half-way across the world.” 

“And so,” broke in the queen, quite forgetting her- 
self, “that ’s where that little witch went, was it"? Not 
a thing have I seen of her from that day to this, and I 
must say it would be a little awkward if she were to come 
back now, for I ’ve given her clothes away to Robin, who 
is a regular rag-picker, and her shoes went to the centi- 
pede — though of course she had n’t enough to fit him out 


58 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


completely. He ’s nearly crazy, poor thing — ten children 
to provide for, and they with a hundred feet apiece ! He 
actually likes them to be sick sometimes to save shoe 
leather.” 

Prince Pietro was not pleased to have the chief min- 
strel of his royal house interrupted in this manner, and 
he arose with dignity and said : 

‘'O queen, the minstrel has failed to please you. 
Command your musicians to play, and we will dance.” 

But Goldheart, who, though her ideas sometimes ran 
this way and that, brightly, like water, came of a family 
as high as the clouds and as old as the sea, and she arose 
and asked the prince to pardon her. Then she caused a 
cup of mead brewed by her fays to be brought to the old 
musician. When he had drunk it, he again began to sing. 

“Once on the sands, your Fire-in-mist escaped, 

And to the oysters ran to beg some pearls ; 

Went sailing on the Spanish men-of-war. 

And yachted with a reckless nautilus. 

Then one still day when slow rain fell at sea, 

And all the shallows lay in calm and sighed. 

She found our place among the tumbled rocks. 

Took off her things, and said she ’d come to stay.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


59 


“Well,” broke in the queen, eager to defend her lady- 
in-waiting, “I don’t see that that was such a liberty! She 
naturally counted on being made welcome!” 

“Since she was there,” muttered Whist, “she might 
as well take off her things.” 

“I ’m afraid he is n’t very much of a minstrel, after 
all,” whispered Red Top to Edda. He had been creep- 
ing closer and closer to the little girl, and now he hung 
his beak over her shoulder in a sentimental manner. 

The old minstrel was deeply offended at all this chat- 
tering. He wagged his beard and struck a really terrific 
blow upon his harp, so that the waves of sound rolling 
out from it shook the fairy palace as if an earthquake had 
come. 

“How these people startle one!” thought the fairy 
queen, and because she was a water fairy all her thoughts 
shone through her as if she had been crystal, and the 
prince, reading this thought, grew somewhat offended too 
and drew his gray robe, which was embroidered with the 
most exquisite fairy lichen, closer about his shoulders. 

The minstrel went on with his story, singing it in a 
voice that rose and fell like the sound of the sea in rocky 


caverns. 


6o 


KDDA AND THE OAK 


“A babbling thing this water fairy seemed, 

Who, talking ever, still was never done ; 

But since her hair was golden in the sun. 

Her eyes like pebbles shining in a pool. 

Her two feet made for dancing all the day. 

We listened to her and we were bewitched.” 

At this the queen shot a sidelong glance at the prince. 
It came to her mind that he might have traveled all this 
way for no other purpose than to ask the hand of her 
lady-in-waiting, Fire-in-mist, in marriage. For some rea- 
son this thought made her unhappy, and she was glad 
when the minstrel took up his song again and thus saved 
her the need of speaking. 

“She told us of this garden ’neath the oak. 

And how the summer seemed to linger here. 

She said the flowers gave perfume all the night. 

And in the oak a kindly dryad dwelt. 

And hence, because we were so very tired 
Of cold gray rocks and ever-sounding sea. 

We begged your fay to bring us to this place : 

She gave her word, and all our tribe set out.” 

At this point the prince, who really was very 
young though indeed he did n’t like to admit it, sprang 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


6i 


from his seat and began talking rapidly to the queen. 

“Really, my Lady Goldheart,” he cried, “you should 
have seen us! We were such a company! The shoe- 
maker was so old we had literally to pry him away from 
the rock. He had grown to it like moss. The court 
embroiderer, who worked this lichen on my robe, refused 
to come unless we could bring along all his patterns, and 
it took us days and days selecting the samples and peal- 
ing it off the rocks. Then there was such a to-do about 
leaving some sea-urchin friends of ours, and a number of 
soft-shell crabs came in a body to protest ! The only per- 
son who really was glad was old Jimson, the lighthouse 
keeper. We had tormented him enough, he said, flying 
around his lamp like moths and when he was lighting it, 
taking advantage to get in under the glass; for you can’t 
burn rock fairies, you know, any more than you can drown 
water fays. When we ’d see him walking on the sands 
we ’d whisper things in his ears, and he ’d think he was 
losing his senses ; and we ’d dance about at twilight in 
the bushes, and he ’d think he saw us, and then he ’d think 
he did n’t. You can’t do much when you get a number of 
human beings together, but if you can get one off alone 
like that you can lead him quite a life.” 


62 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


At this, two old rock fairies, twin sisters and the 
court dressmakers, who had been rocking back and forth 
slowly, with their hands clasped before them, looked up 
and said mournfully: 

“You can so.” 

“Prince,” implored the old minstrel, “am I not to 
finish my song?” 

“Well, Tetro, I suppose you must — for the glory of 
our house. My father always used to tell me I was to be 
very careful of the glory of our house,” he said to the 
queen. 

“Why is he not here, prince? Do the fairies of your 
tribe die?” 

“Oh, no, no,” cried the prince, violently, “I 
would n’t go so far as to say that!” 

And tens and dozens of the rock fairies joined their 
voices, and said that none of them would go so far as to 
say that. 

“But father went off one day on a sea horse — many 
and many of the old people went along with him. It 
was an adventure. But they never returned.” 

“Why, then,” demanded Goldheart, “do you not call 
yourself the king, since your father has not returned?” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


63 


The prince looked distressed. 

“Well, there,” he said, “do you know, I forgot all 
about that? I ’m always overlooking things, and that ’s 
simply one of the things that slipped my mind.” 

“But master, royal master — ” implored the minstrel. 

“Now see here, Tetro, don’t worry any more about 
that old song of yours, that ’s a good fellow ! Just put in 
your time composing a coronation ode for me. Does n’t 
it seem to you. Queen Goldheart, that this palace would 
be a fine place for my coronation? The preparations will 
be just the thing for my work people. Trade is terribly 
slack just now, and we can set every one at work making 
costumes and shoes and jewels.” 

“But, royal master — ” 

“You can’t do a thing with Tetro once you get him 
started. He feels you must know the rest of the history 
of our hegira. Ahem — hegira ! Fine word, is n’t it? But 
really, I can tell it much quicker. We came through 
forests — ” 

'‘Beneath the shadows of the solemn pines — ” 

broke in Tetro, twanging his harp so that it sounded like 
a rising storm. 


64 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


“And along hundreds of miles of dusty road and the 
awfullest held-stubble — ” 

“With bleeding feet and tears that flecked the dust — ” 

bawled the old minstrel, shaking his forked beard. 

“Nothing of the sort, Tetro!” cried the prince 
angrily. “No one’s feet bled, and no one wept, so far as 
I know. We only walked at twilight, and there was 
always something new to see. It was very entertaining. 
But when we got to the public drinking fountain at a little 
town in the western foothills of the Alleghenies, a shock- 
ing thing happened.” 

At this the two dressmakers threw up their hands 
and hissed: 

“Sh — sh — sh-h-h!” 

“Those two are the easiest shocked of any of us,” 
explained the prince, “though all of us are easily 
shocked.” 

“What shocked you, pleased” inquired Edda, speak- 
ing out for the first time. The prince turned to 
Goldheart. 

“Ought we to tell the child?” he asked. 

“Do get on, noble prince,” pleaded Goldheart. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


65 

“Edda will soon be a little girl again, and then she will 
forget all she has heard to-night, so you can’t do her any 
harm.” 

“Well, at that common drinking fountain,” went on 
the prince, “was a little low-born imp of a water fairy — 
a mere underling paid to tickle the horses’ noses when 
they came to drink, and to sit on the edge of the drinking 
cup and make the children choke — and if you please, 
your waiting lady. Fire-in-mist, fell in love with him, 
married him, and lives there by the fountain. There are 
a couple of cotton-wood trees there, and a few ferns, and 
she makes out with those. I believe she ’s got in with a 
set of river fays near at hand, and has them to keep her 
from getting lonesome.” 

“She was a little spoiled, I ’m afraid,” murmured 
Goldheart apologetically. “A public fountain! But I 
dare say it ’s a merry enough life !” 

“Upon a peasant lad she fixed her heart,” 

sang Tetro, letting out a line of the poetry that was all 
coiled up in him like a spider’s web. 

“Well, and so,” continued the prince, “we had to 
come on alone. If it had n’t been for Ahasuerus, our 


66 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


astrologer, we never should have found the way. He took 
nightly observations.” 

Again the twin court dressmakers sat up and said: 

“He did so.” 

“So, by hook and crook, we got here.” 

“By field and fen, by gorge and mountain height,” 
wailed Tetro. 

“Do be quiet, Tetro,” cried the prince, completely 
out of patience. Seeing that they would not be chidden, 
dozens and dozens of reckless young fairies dashed upon 
Tetro, took the harp from him, and laughingly pushed 
him down on the steps of the throne. One pleasant-faced 
young rock fairy brought the old minstrel a pipe filled 
with a sort of seaweed, and soon Tetro was as contented 
as he could be. The two dressmakers, who loved a smoke 
but dared not take it, came over and sat by him — one on 
each side — where they could sniff his pipe, and the three 
old people rocked back and forth in perfect contentment. 

Every one else was impatient to dance, and seeing 
this, the queen commanded her musicians to play. Edda 
would have liked to dance with the fairy prince, but he 
took out Queen Goldheart. All the other handsome 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


67 


young fairies had chosen beautiful partners, and Edda 
sat alone on the throne, feeling as if she were not really 
in the party at all. By and by partners began to present 
themselves, but they were the minstrel, the astrologer, 
and the court shoemaker, all so old that they were almost 
bent double, and all having long white beards and claw- 
like hands. As they had presented themselves at precisely 
the same moment Edda said to each in turn, politely: 

’d love to dance with you if these other gentlemen 
had not asked me.” 

‘'Dear me,” said the astrologer, “how unfortunate 
it all is! At this rate Edda ’ll have no dances at all. 
Can’t we think of some kind of a dance in which we four 
can take part'?” And before she could say a word, the 
court shoemaker cried out, “There ’s ring-around-a-rosy !” 

They seized on the idea — though it seemed to Edda 
only a very small idea — with great joy, and the next 
thing she knew she and the three old men were whirling 
around and around the hall almost as fast as a potter’s 
wheel, the long gray beards lashing against Edda’s face 
and the bony fingers holding her so tightly she could n’t 
get away. 

The band was playing a piece called “Thistle- 


68 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


Down,” and indeed, all the dancers seemed to drift and 
float like the white seeds of the dandelion in a summer 
wind. They were in the very midst of this, dancing so 
swiftly and madly that Edda felt as if she were herself 
turning into down, when a shrill, horrid sound broke upon 
the company. At once the instruments began to quaver, 
the dancers to move more slowly, and the wonderful blue- 
moonlight palace to grow whiter. 

Again the shocking sounds struck their ears and 
shuddered through them, and the fairies put up their 
hands to shut them out. Then every one stood still, 
staring, for the palace was growing paler every moment. 
The walls seemed to be melting away; the throne 
wavered like a candle in the wind; the queen was trem- 
bling where she stood. Edda alone did not tremble. 
She seemed to be growing warmer and larger, and a 
feeling which can only be described as “at homeness” 
began to steal over her. 

Then once again the sound — “Cock-a-doo-da-loo!” 
It was grandmother’s rooster. Jack Pheasant. 

Edda laughed — and then the next moment gasped, 
for the fairies were hurrying from the palace as fast as 
they could fly — all tribes, ages, conditions — the queen 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


69 


leaning on her ladies-in-waiting, the prince supporting 
the court dressmakers, Red Top and Bushy Tail holding 
their sides with laughter. 

“Come, come,” they cried to Edda. “The night is 
over. You must run to the crow and be made over again.” 

“Oh, yes, yes,” Edda said, suddenly caring nothing 
for fairies, and having only one desire — to be a little girl 
again in her dear grandmother’s house. So the three ran 
out of the palace just as the last beautiful moonshimmer 
died out of its walls, and as they left the door they saw 
a slender green creature, with a beautiful, shy, wild face, 
leaping from one of the window-sills of the palace. 

“It ’s the dryad of the oak tree,” said Red Top. 
“She ’s been listening. She ought to have sent in her 
card and been properly presented.” 

The three of them ran down the path as fast as they 
could, and they were immensely surprised to meet the 
crow, hurrying along with Edda’s shoes in his hand and 
her nightdress over his arm. 

“Here, child !” he screamed. “Get into these, quick ! 
Here, behind this hazel bush with you!” 

Edda ran behind the hazel bush, wondering what 
she, at her present size, was to do with shoes of that size 


70 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


and a nightdress. But as the crow, the woodpecker, and 
the squirrel all stood without, yelling, “Get them on 
quick, Edda, do !” she did as she was told, and the wonder 
was to find that she fitted into the nightgown, and was 
perfectly comfortable in the shoes. She stepped from 
behind the hazel bush, expecting to see her friends wait- 
ing for her, but instead, she stepped into her own bedroom, 
and there was Aunt Caroline with a little tray of fruit in 
her hand coming into the room. 

“Eat these, Edda,” she said, “before you get up. 
It ’s such fun to do things like that when you ’re visiting. 
I ’m over very early, for your uncle had to leave on the 
six-thirty train, quite unexpectedly. I think I ’ll stay here 
with you and mother for the next few days. Did you 
have a pleasant night, dear?” 

Edda looked straight in Aunt Caroline’s gray-green 

eyes. 

“Did you know the rock fairies had come to visit the 
water fairies?” she asked. 

Just then the voice of grandmother was heard out- 
side the door, asking for Edda. 

Aunt Caroline raised her finger. 

“Sh-sh-sh!” said she. 


CHAPTER V 


N ever had Edda passed such a day as she was to 
pass this day. The truth is, very few things had 
happened back in the Top Flat. It was, per- 
haps, as dull a place as a little girl could hnd, and the 
whole trouble lay in the fact that there was no work there 
for Edda to do, and that she really did not know how 
to play. 

At grandmother’s house, however, there was some- 
thing to do all the time. Of course one could stop to rest, 
but to rest after one is tired is as interesting as it can 
be. There was a maid to help grandmother, but she was 
busy in the dairy and in the kitchen, which left the beau- 
tiful living-room, and the dining-room with its old china 
and silver, and all the bedrooms, and the garden for the 
others to look after. Edda stood on one side of the beds 
and Aunt Caroline on the other, and they made them so 
carefully there was not a wrinkle to be seen. Then there 
was the dainty, busy process which grandmother called 
71 


72 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


'‘brushing up,” and “tidying.” At this Edda and Aunt 
Caroline helped, and it took quite a while, because when 
Edda got to dusting she found such charming things that 
she could not bring herself to pass them by. She had to 
lift off the cover of the rose jar and smell the potpourri; 
she asked permission to open the doors of the little cabi- 
net and to look at the treasures inside — at the little old 
man carved in ivory, sitting under a peple tree; at the 
string of little ivory elephants ; at the blown ostrich egg 
in a nest of seaweed; at the fan with butterflies painted 
on it; and at the gold snuffbox that had belonged to 
Great-great-grandfather Bartlett, who knew LaFayette. 

Grandmother had many stories to tell Edda about 
her kinfolk, and about the time when she was a little girl, 
and about the things she meant to give Edda sometime. 
At last, however, everything was attended to inside the 
house, and then they put on sun hats and went out into 
the garden. Grandmother gave Edda a basket with a pair 
of blunt scissors in it and told her that she was to help 
Aunt Caroline select the flowers to put in the vases — the 
tall Chinese vases, and the little Bohemian-glass vases, 
and the earthen vases grandfather had seen a man make 
in Cuba. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


73 


All through breakfast and while they were working 
in the house, Edda had half forgotten about the things 
that had happened to her the night before. She almost 
thought they were dreams, only brighter and wilder and 
more interesting than most dreams, but the first thing 
Aunt Caroline said when they were out in the garden was : 

“Why, mother, whatever can have happened to that 
honeysuckle that runs up to Edda’s window? It seems 
to be torn from the trellis here and there as if a cat, or 
something even larger — and very much clumsier — had 
been climbing up it.” 

Edda laughed and wrinkled up her little nose. 

“I slid down it in the night,” she said, “when the 
elves ran away with my shoes. They used them for auto- 
mobiles, and it was only just before morning that I got 
them back again.” 

Grandmother laughed and said nothing. She 
thought Edda was telling her stories to amuse her. Aunt 
Caroline was busy looking at the gravel by the water-lily 
pond. 

“It looks very much mussed up around here,” she 
said. “I shall have to get the rake and smooth it over.” 

“Oh, that,” cried Edda, “is where the elves got in 


74 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


the boat to go to the water fairies’ palace. I went with 
them, you know; and afterward they took me to the 
Moonlight Palace.” 

“You will be writing books, next, my dear,” said 
grandmother kindly. “I used to think when your Aunt 
Caroline was little that she would write books. But she 
has been so busy doing other things — looking after her old 
mother and other folk — that she has n’t had time for any- 
thing else.” 

“Well, I ’ve had plenty of time to tell stories, even 
if I have n’t had time to write them,” Aunt Caroline said. 
She sighed, too, but as if she had n’t meant to, and Edda 
looked up at her and read in her eyes that it was a sorrow 
to her that she had n’t made those story-books. There 
always seemed to be something back of what Aunt Caro- 
line said. Her mind was like a pleasant road that kept 
winding on and on, and as you made your way along it 
you never knew where you were going to stop. Edda was 
very young, but she was not too young to feel that Aunt 
Caroline was somehow different from any one else she 
had known. Although “the lady with green eyes” lived 
in the world about her, she knew of certain secret doors 
that opened into other worlds. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


75 

“It does seem to me,” said grandmother as they 
passed under the oak, “that the old tree is not looking as 
well as usual this year. There are yellow leaves on it 
here and there, and it seems to be drooping as if it were 
sick in some way.” 

“Do trees get sick, grandmother^” 

“Indeed they do, Edda. I am something of a tree 
doctor, I think, but really, I don’t know what to do with 
my old oak. Have you noticed, Caroline, that the oak is 
drooping?” 

It must have been imagination, but at that moment 
it seemed to Edda that the little green creature with the 
shy, wild face looked out of a cleft in the oak and 
motioned anxiously for them to come on. Edda dragged 
her Aunt Caroline up nearer to the tree, but when they 
reached the place where Edda thought she had seen the 
dryad there was nothing but the rent in the tree-trunk. 
Something heaved a deep sigh, but that might have been 
nothing more than the wind in the branches. 

At this moment Edda chanced to look down, and at 
her feet she saw a fairy ring of mushrooms, with tender, 
wonderfully green grass within the circle. She dropped 
down beside it, and felt the grass with her fingers. She 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


/ 


6 







EDDA DISCOVERS THE FAIRY RING OF MUSHROOMS 


knew at once — though she could not tell how she knew it 
— that it was here that the fairy ball had been given the 
night before. 



EDDA AND THE OAK 


77 


But where now was the Moonlight Palace? What 
were the fairies doing? Where were all her friends of the 
night before? As she was asking these questions of her- 
self she heard a great chattering above her head, and then 
a hard tapping, and when she looked up there were Red 
Top and Bushy Tail up above her, both looking quite 
sleepy and tired. She understood from their manner that 
she was not to act as if she knew them, so she said never 
a word, but followed her aunt to the far end of the garden, 
where the hollyhocks grew against the stone wall. Round 
about the feet of the tall, soldier-like flowers were many 
beautiful and sweet-smelling things — rosemary, larkspur, 
sweet-william, bachelor buttons, London pride, Canter- 
bury bells, sweet peas, and nasturtiums. 

“While you are cutting the flowers for the vases,” 
said Aunt Caroline, “I shall busy myself about something 
else.” 

There was something sweet and strange in Aunt 
Caroline’s voice, as, indeed, there often was. She sat 
down on the grass as if she had been a little girl, and 
began to make flower dolls. She told Edda to bring her 
some long, slender grass blades, and some red, flaunting 
poppies. When the little girl had brought them. Aunt 


78 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


Caroline took a poppy and with a blade of grass tied down 
all the petals save two, which, being exactly opposite 
each other, stood out like the arms of a little doll. The 
grass blade became a green sash, and the petals of the 
poppy that had been tied down looked like scarlet silken 
skirts. The pistil made a yellow head for the little crea- 
ture and the stamens clustering round about looked like 
a fine neck-ruff. After Aunt Caroline had made a num- 
ber of these dainty little dolls she sent Edda to pick 
hollyhocks, and out of these she made grand hollyhock 
ladies. They had white and pink and red skirts, and 
green heads with larkspur or nasturtium hats ; then these 
doll mothers were given some little white poppy babies 
with capes of pink poppy petals. Bold flower gentlemen 
were fashioned out of green leaves, with pansy faces. 
These were the fathers. 

After whole families of these little creatures had 
been made, Edda carried them to the garden bench, and 
set before them little cups and plates of acorns, which 
Aunt Caroline showed her how to make. These she filled 
with beautiful food, made of grasses and flowers. 

“It ’s a very pretty world,” said Aunt Caroline, “and 
just made for you and me and the other folks.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


79 


“Well,” said grandmother, who had come rustling 
down the path in her clean linen frock, and with a face 
as kind as the summer sky, “although it is such a very 
fine place we have to work if we are to stay in it. It is 
almost time for dinner, and in a little while it will be 
time for supper, and there is n’t a thing in the house 
to eat.” 

Edda grew almost pale at these words. She won- 
dered how you got things to eat when you were out in the 
country. In the Top Flat you telephoned, but grand- 
mother had no telephone. She said she did n’t like them 
because they were so interrupting. It appeared that at 
grandmother’s house, in order to get things to eat, it was 
necessary to hitch up Lily White and go driving to this 
neighbor’s and that, and to this market and that, and to 
tuck things away in the back of the cart. It also was nec- 
essary to look for fresh eggs all about the chicken-house 
and barnyard and haymow ; and to go into the cool dairy 
to see about the cream and the buttermilk, and to see what 
milk could be used for cottage cheese, and what would 
be good for clabber. And one had to go to the kitchen 
and see how many tarts there were left from yesterday, 
and whether the making of the beaten biscuit could be put 


8o 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


off until to-morrow, and to ask about the drop cakes, and 
advise Anna to make caramel syrup for the baked custard. 
Besides, one had to look out all the time to see about 
‘putting up” things. Now one put up strawberries, and 
now peaches, and now blackberries, and now one made 
marmalade. It really was a thousand times more fun 
than just telephoning to the grocer, who sent the boy, who 
delivered things to the maid, who served them to the fam- 
ily — and no questions asked. 

Edda would not have believed it possible there were 
so many nice things to do in the world. She had been so 
busy, and she was so delightfully hungry and tired, that 
when they sat down to dinner together and she saw the 
baked ham with cunning little cloves sticking in it, and 
the brown French fried potatoes she had watched Anna 
cooking; and the red radishes she had picked; and the 
amber jelly she had chosen out of the preserve closet; and 
the fresh crullers she had sprinkled sugar over; and the 
strawberries she had seen grandmother hulling — her eyes 
almost stood out of her head and her mouth watered. 

“It ’s great fun eating,” said Aunt Caroline. “And 
it ’s fun to breathe, and to look around, and to talk to 
Eddas!” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


8i 



She spoke as if there were thousands and thousands 
of Eddas. 

“I declare, Caroline, my dear,” said grandmother, '‘I 


''she told EDDA TO BRING HER . . . SOME RED FLAUNTING POPPIES'" 

don't believe you will ever grow up! You are such a 
child!” 

If making everything seem charming even when it 
was something that really had to be done was being a 


82 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


child, then, certainly. Aunt Caroline was childish. She 
had said that Edda’s city dresses were not the sort that she 
could have fun in, and so in the morning she had bought 
some dark blue cotton at the store, and with a large pair 
of sharp scissors, and singing all the while, she cut two 
frocks and two pairs of bloomers for Edda, and sewed 
them up on the machine almost as fast as lightning. Edda 
was given a thimble and taught to overcast the seams, and 
shown how to pull out bastings. And then, about three 
o’clock, she was tumbled into a clean nightgown, put on 
the sofa in her room, and fell so sound asleep that she 
never so much as thought of a fairy. 

When she woke it was time to bathe and to dress 
for the afternoon ride. They went through lanes where 
the trees met above their heads, and past the common 
where the cattle browsed, and where a pool lay among 
rushes ; they drove out past the Home for the Deaf, where 
the children who could hear none of all the sounds in the 
world were playing about the yard; they drove on to the 
Old Soldiers’ Home, where three old, old men in blue 
clothes sat and blinked at the sun ; and they went to the 
little stone church, which stood on the top of a hill. It no 
longer had any windows or doors, but was open wide to 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


83 


all the winds and the rains of heaven; and round about it 
lay the dead, who had lain there long. All their names 
were French, and near by Aunt Caroline showed Edda 
where some of their homes had been; the lilac and rose 
bushes told where their gardens once had bloomed, and 
their broken chimneys told where they once had sat about 
their hres. 

‘‘Does it make you sad?” asked Edda of Aunt 
Caroline. 

“Oh, no,” said Aunt Caroline. “It ’s so good to live 
that it must be beautiful to go on to what comes after- 
ward. Never be afraid of things, Edda — they are so 
much lovelier and sweeter when they come than we ever 
could imagine they would be.” 

It was after supper, when they were again walking 
in the garden, that grandmother and Aunt Caroline once 
more spoke about the oak. 

“There really is something the matter with it, Caro- 
line,” said grandmother. “What can it be?” 

“I don’t know,” mused Aunt Caroline. “I shall have 
to speak to the dryad about it. Very likely she is growing 
lazy.” 

When Aunt Caroline said anything like this she 


84 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


always spoke as if she were joking, and even her own 
mother could not tell whether she meant what she said 
or not. 

Grandmother and Aunt Caroline sat down on a seat 
to talk the matter over. Edda, looking down the walk, 
saw the basket she had carried out in the morning lying 
forgotten on the grass. She knew that both grandmother 
and Aunt Caroline loved to have each thing in its proper 
place, and so she ran to pick up the basket. That brought 
her almost to the stone wall, where the hollyhocks stood 
together in a tall row. They were rustling together in a 
very human sort of way, and as Edda stopped to smile 
at them she was amazed to hear them talking. 

“I heard from the dryad,” said a tall purple holly- 
hock, ‘‘that she really was growing very much frightened 
about the health of the old oak tree. She has been think- 
ing of going to the fairy queen for help.” 

“That woman with green eyes is all very well,” 
remarked a pink hollyhock, “but she does n’t know what 
to do for trees. I ’m not sure that she always knows what 
to do for us. Sometimes when she rakes and scrapes 
around my roots she makes me dreadfully nervous, and 
she picks a flower here and leaves one there in a very 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


85 


partial manner. You ’d have thought that I deserved 
some attention this morning, when she was making some 
of our family into flower dolls for that strange little city 
child who has come here. I ’m sure I looked as well as 
any one in the border. But never a word did she say of 
me, and I was passed by as if I were the commonest sort 
of a hollyhock, whereas you know that the lady with 
white hair sent away Down East to get seeds for me from 
an old school friend of hers. If I ’ve heard her tell of 
that once, I have twenty times. The lady with white 
hair says the same thing over and over again, I ’ve noticed. 
The oak says that ’s because she ’s old.” 

‘‘The oak ought to know,” said a sweet white holly- 
hock. ‘‘Never have I seen anything so old as the oak.” 

“Except the crow,” said the purple hollyhock. 

The mention of the crow seemed to bring back to 
Edda all that had happened the night before, and which, 
all through her busy day, had been as faint and dim in 
her mind as if it had been floating gray mist. But now 
it all came back — the squirrel that talked, the wood- 
pecker that was her friend, the teasing elves, the babbling 
water fairies, the tough little rock fairies and their long 
journey. Her heart beat fast and she ran down the walk. 


86 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


her basket on her arm, to look at the face in the oak. It 
seemed more twisted than ever, as if the great tree were 
in pain. Aunt Caroline and grandmother had gone into 
the house, it seemed, for the garden was very still, except 
for the noises among the trees, and the faint, faint whis- 
pering of the pond. 

As Edda looked, dark clouds began to rush over the 
Clear air of the evening. The sun had set, but a soft light, 
the color of pale daffodils, spread over all the sky and 
in the far west deepened to orange. Now wild blackness 
came rolling along, and out of the cloud bellowed a loud 
wind. If a hundred trumpeters had been blowing their 
horns they could not have made a noise that would have 
reached like that down from the sky to where Edda stood. 

All of the trees and flowers began to twist and bend 
before the storm, and the oak roared like an angry giant. 
One of its branches fell at Edda’s feet, and hundreds of 
leaves blew from it. Then out of the rent in the side of 
the oak slipped the creature which Edda had seen twice 
before. It must be the dryad, Edda knew — the dryad, 
with her dark hair blown about her, her green garments 
torn by the wind, and her thin arms lifted and tossing 
above her head. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


87 


“Oh, kind, beautiful oak,” she cried, “do not break! 
Do not fall ! I, your dryad, who love you, beg you to be 
brave ! A thousand thousand winds have blown over you 
and have not broken you. Do not yield now, oak, brave 
oak ! Listen, take heart ! It is I, your dryad, who speaks !” 

Edda was so blown about by the storm that she had 
to cling hard to the little silver-leaved poplar, which had 
turned as white as a ghost with fear. She longed to run 
to the poor dryad and comfort her, but while she was look- 
ing the dryad seemed to be lifted by the wind and borne 
up among the tossing limbs of the oak, and just then Aunt 
Caroline’s voice was heard calling: 

“Child, child, where are you^? Edda, little Edda! 
Come in out of the storm!” 

Edda could see Aunt Caroline standing on the porch. 
The wind had loosened her hair and tumbled her green 
dress, and as she held out her arms for Edda to run into 
them she looked so much like the dryad that Edda hardly 
could tell which one it was that carried her in and set her 
before the bright little fire of apple-tree boughs. 


CHAPTER \T 


A fter the first of the storm had passed it grew 
very quiet. The soft rain falling outside looked 
like a curtain of silver beads as it dropped in little 
continuous drops, which fell straight to the ground 
through the gray, windless air. Then grandmother and 
Aunt Caroline and Edda sang together, while Aunt Caro- 
line played on the old organ very sweetly; and when 
Edda had been put in her bed and had fallen asleep, with 
her aunt’s kisses warm on her lips, the old tunes they had 
been singing ran over and over in her head. They ran 
even into the land of dreams, and floated along on happy 
waves of music, until, suddenly, something sharp and 
worried broke through these memories. She opened her 
eyes, to see Red Top sitting on the foot of her bed. 

“Oh, Edda,” he cried, “there you lie sleeping as com- 
fortably as can be, but not one of my poor family has 
had a wink of sleep this night.” 

“But what is the matter asked Edda sleepily. 

88 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


89 


“It’s the dryad — the oak dryad! We can’t do a 
thing with her, she ’s so unhappy. She says the oak is 
crying and groaning all the time, and she knows that it 
is dying. You should see her running round and round 
out there in the rain, weeping and wringing her hands. 
It ’s enough to break the heart of any one who is n’t a 
philosopher. And it ’s hard, even on a philosopher. 
Every one said I was to come to you. Just listen to 
that, now!” 

Edda sat up in bed to listen, and heard a wild, sad 
sound which rose and fell, and then rose again in a way 
to make the tears come to any little girl’s eyes. 

“I must go to her,” Edda said. “I must go at once. 
But oh, dear, look at the size of me! I ought to settle 
down to be either a fairy or a little girl. This changing 
about all the time is a great deal of trouble.” 

“No trouble at all, when you know how,” said a 
teasing voice from the window-sill. The room was nearly 
dark, but Edda could make out Bushy Tail, sitting there 
with something in his paws, his eyes gleaming like tiny 
lamps. 

‘^Nothing is hard when you know how,” answered 
Edda, repeating something she often had heard her 


90 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


mother say. “If you know how I ’m to be made over 
into the right size to talk with a dryad, I wish you ’d tell 
me, please. Bushy Tail.” 

It was not easy to tease Edda, for she spoke gently 
and really had no thought but to be happy and good all 
of the time — or at least, almost all of the time. But the 
squirrel was born to tease. 

“I have something here in my paws that will do the 
work,” he said. “The crow sent it. It ’s a pill. But I 
suppose you don’t like pills 

“I ’m not thinking about what I like or don’t like,” 
Edda said. “Give me the pill. Bushy Tail, and you ’ll 
see how quickly I ’ll swallow it!” 

She came close to the squirrel, and he dropped the 
pill on her little tongue. It was down her throat in a sec- 
ond, and even while she stood swallowing she felt herself 
beginning to shrink. 

“There you are,” said the squirrel, “made over while 
you wait ! Though what you are to do about the oak, I 
can’t imagine. You don’t look to me like a person who 
knows much about trees.” 

Edda knew nothing about trees, but it was not very 
pleasant to have the squirrel say so, while he sat twirling 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


91 


his whiskers and looking at her as if she were an amusing 
little thing. But the sound of the dryad’s crying was in 
her ears, and without waiting for anything more she 
scrambled down the honeysuckle trellis and ran down the 
walk, taking hundreds and hundreds of her short fairy- 
like steps, to where the dryad wailed at the foot of the 
tree. 

The rain had passed, and the moon shone out from 
behind clouds, so that Edda could see where the poor 
thing lay, her arms outstretched, and her hair streaming 
over her shoulders. Edda put her arms about her, and 
then was almost frightened, for the dryad seemed very 
different from any one she ever had touched before. Not 
only was she unlike a human being, but she was different 
from the fairies. About her was an odor as sweet as leaves 
wet with rain, and her sighs sounded like the wind among 
trees. Her eyes, when they were lifted to Edda, were like 
little pools of water left by the rain. They reflected all 
that was round about them, just as a pool reflects the trees 
and sky. 

“You must tell me everything,” said Edda. “I ’m 
terribly young, and I Ve not been to school — only learned 
at home — so I ’m not very wise. I ’ve heard it said that I 


92 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


knew a great deal that most children don’t know, but 
whether I know anything that will help you, I can’t tell. 
But first, what is your name^” 

“My name, dear child,” said the dryad, “is Verda. I 
am old, yet always young. I was born when the oak was 
born, and I have no life apart from it. For a long time 
the oak has been losing strength and joy. I hear it 
sobbing in the night; sometimes it is afraid of storms, 
though it used to glory in them. Some great trouble has 
come to my tree — my own, beautiful tree — and I cannot 
find out what it is.” 

“Have n’t you any father or mother asked Edda, 
wondering how it was possible for any one to live with- 
out parents. 

“I have no one but the oak,” sighed Verda. “I am 
not even acquainted with these happy creatures here in 
the garden. I am not of their kind, and besides I am 
very, very shy. I might have run away from even you, 
dear child, if I had seen you coming. No one ever has 
touched me before. It is my nature to be as wild as the 
clouds, as free as the wind, as faithful as the sun. Now 
that you have touched me, and with such kindness, I 
shall be your friend forever.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


93 


“Thank you, Verda,” said Edda. “Thank you very, 
very much. I have n’t any one to play with at home, and 
I have n’t met any children here yet. Can we play 
together, do j^ou thinks” 

“Not in the daytime, I fear, child. Human beings 
would be frightened — all save one-in-a-thousand — were 
they to see me going about in the daytime and talking with 
one of their kind. They would say the oak was haunted, 
and very likely it would be cut down and burned.” 

“Are n’t you even acquainted with Goldheart, the 
queen of the water fairies?” asked Edda. 

“Not even with her, though we have lived together 
in this garden a long, long time. But she is so rich and 
powerful, and has so many creatures about her all willing 
to serve her, that I thought she would n’t care to know a 
mere dryad like me, who has no power at all, even over 
her own tree. My pleasures have been to sing with the 
oak in storms, to bask with it in sunshine, to listen with it 
to the strange earth secrets which are told to us. I have 
thought only of the oak and myself, and now that I am in 
trouble I am being punished for my selfishness.” 

“Please don’t say that,” whispered Edda, brushing 
the dryad’s wild hair back from her face. “But come 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


94 

with me to Goldheart. You really can’t think how kind 
she is.” 

The dryad got to her feet and, first throwing kisses 
from the ends of her slender fingers to the drooping oak, 
she walked down the path with Edda. They went on 
until they came to the boat landing, the woodpecker and 
the squirrel following them at a little distance. Edda’s 
idea was to go to the boat landing and take one of the 
mullen skiffs and row over to the Water-Lily Palace. 
Fortunately, Whist was sleeping on the wharf. He at 
once got out a boat for them and called two of the elves 
to row them over. It was decided that it would be better 
for Red Top and Bushy Tail not to go, and Edda was 
glad to leave the squirrel, at least, behind her. He kept 
showing his teeth at her in a strange way, and she could 
not tell whether he was laughing at her or trying to 
frighten her. 

It took them but a short time to cross the pond, and 
once at the palace they were taken by a grand green 
beetle down the stairs in the water-lily stem to a large 
reception-room — the dryad making her way very tim- 
idly — and told to wait. As they sat there silently, 
Verda wrapped up in her trouble and Edda saying 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


95 


nothing because she saw how badly the dryad was 
feeling, they heard voices. Goldheart was speaking to 
some one. 

“No, dear prince,” she was saying, “I cannot marry 
you yet. You and yours are strangers to me. You have 
come without invitation into the domain that has 
belonged to the water fairies for longer than I should 
care to say. Do something to show me that you are 
worth)^; better still, cause your people to do something 
that will prove them to be as useful and as wise as my 
own people.” 

“But what can I do, O queen? Ask what you will, if 
it lies within my power I will do it. I no longer care for 
life unless you are to be my queen. Nor would it be my 
happiness alone, or, as I hope, yours, which would result 
from our marriage; our union would unite the two most 
powerful branches of fairies, and bring peace and content- 
ment to all our kind. Do not send me from you, kind and 
beautiful Goldheart. You are rightly named ; you have a 
heart of gold, and are forever looking about you to see 
what good you can do. Let me have that heart of gold 
for my own. Be kinder than ever you have been before, 
and become my queen.” 


96 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


At this moment Prince Pietro drew back the shim- 
mering curtain of spun glass, and Queen Goldheart came 
into the room. When she saw Edda there she put from 
her the queenly manner, and, as she often did, spoke out 
like a happy and common person. 

“Dear me, Edda,” she said, “I had no idea you were 
here! Where is my door beetle Why didn’t he 
announce you?” 

But Edda gave her no time to reprove the careless 
servant. Rising, she led the dryad to her. 

“O queen,” she said, “this is the dryad, Verda, who 
has lived in the oak since the beginning. She is in trouble 
and I have brought her to you.” 

Goldheart seated herself, with Verda and Edda 
before her, and asked to hear all of the tale. Meanwhile 
Prince Pietro walked about the room, watching the gold- 
fish that darted about, keeping guard over the queen, and 
to be seen easily enough through the glass walls of the 
palace. Water flowers and grasses nodded without; odd, 
shining little water bugs floated in the green water; and 
once a long black eel swam by. 

Between them, Edda and the dryad told all the story 
to Goldheart. The prince had been listening as he moved 



VERDA DESCENDING THE WATER-LILY STEM TO THE QUEEN S PALACE 


98 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


about the room, and now that the story was finished he 
came forward. 

“Queen,” he said, stopping before her, “I have heard 
what the dryad has said and I can see that she needs help, 
and at once. Tell me, if I can save this oak which makes 
beautiful the garden and gives a home to your friends, 
will you give me your hand in marriage?” 

Goldheart arose, trembling slightly, and stood with 
her hand on Edda’s shoulder. Then she smiled very 
sweetly. 

“Prince Pietro,” she said, “I will.” And again Edda 
thought her voice was like silver bells. 

At that. Prince Pietro glowed with new life, like a 
flower after rain, or a star when the sky clears. He turned 
to the dryad. 

“Say that you trust me, madam,” he begged, ^^erda 
smiled upon him too. 

“Yes, yes,” she said, “believe me, prince, I do.” 

“There is much to do,” said the prince. “I go into 
great danger, it may be. If I never see you again, dear 
queen, farewell.” 

“Danger, Pietro?” cried the queen. “What do you 
mean by that?” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


99 


“We, the rock fairies,” he answered, “are under- 
ground workers. We are miners, engineers, tunnel-mak- 
ers, bridge-builders. We burrow, we delve, we change the 
course of water, we tear down the rocks. You may have 
thought me proud and idle because I would n’t tell my 
own tales, but caused my minstrel to do that for me. But 
you understand, that is a custom merely. Besides, Flint, 
my poor old minstrel, is my best and most faithful friend 
and it would break his heart if I took his place in story- 
telling. When it comes to real work, however, no one is 
more industrious than we rock fairies. Nor may we of 
royal blood rest idle while the others toil. I am myself 
at the head of my corps of engineers, and with your per- 
mission I will summon my assistants. It is evident from 
what the dryad tells us that the trouble with the noble oak 
lies deep in the earth, among its very roots. It will be 
my business to search underground until I find what is 
wrong and remedy it.” 

“Oh, Pietro!” gasped Goldheart. 

“Come, come,” he said, “this is work for men. Do 
not distress yourselves. Believe me, all will be well.” 

He left them, and Goldheart, seeing how restless 
and how miserable the poor dryad was, proposed that they 


ICO 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


should float about the pond on her magic shallops made 
of rose leaves. So three of them were brought, and Gold- 
heart, Verda, and Edda drifted about the pond in the 
moonlight. They did not care to talk; they were better 
pleased to be apart and silent. The fireflies lighted their 
way, and they passed a long time in this manner, each 
wondering what was going on in those deep chambers of 
the palace where the prince of the rock fairies talked with 
his trusty laborers. 

Could Queen Goldheart have seen Prince Pietro 
then, as, clad in brown, he stood among his clever miners 
and blasters, his builders of waterways, and his makers 
of bridges, she would not have known him, hung about 
as he was with the tools which he found necessary to cmy 
with him underground. 

They left the Water-Lily Palace by its deepest 
chamber, and closing behind them the doors which kept 
the ooze and lowest mire of the pond from the shining 
house of the queen, they made their way with great diffi- 
culty, tunneling like beavers, to the shorter roots of the 
oak. Here they found nothing amiss. 

“The trouble lies deeper,” said the prince to his 
engineers. “We must go on.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


101 


So they went on, digging along the great roots, 
careful of the fibers, until they had gone to the end of 
the roots which reached toward the pond. Here, too, all 
was well. Strong as steel, fine as lacework, the roots 
and rootlets were meshed in the earth. 

“We must still go on,” said the prince. 

So weary were his men by this time that their backs 
were bowed and their feet almost refused to bear them. 
But when the prince said, “Shall we rest?” they cried with 
one accord, “No, no!” 

They understood very well what was at stake. If 
they could discover what was the matter with the oak, and 
if they could save it, they might dwell forever in this 
pleasant place. They could take to v/ife the laughing 
water fairies; they could give their maidens to the bright 
young men of the other tribe; and they could make this 
peaceful place their home — after many wanderings and 
dangers they at last could rest. 

The next labor was to follow the roots that ran away 
from the pond, and here they had yet harder labor, 
for on this side the great oak had gripped the earth 
with all its strength, clamping about the bowlders and 
bracing itself against the storms. 


102 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


When the little engineers had tunneled on yet far- 
ther they came to a great wall of sandstone, against which 
the roots had flattened themselves. Here no water 
moistened them; no further reach was possible to them. 
They lost their strength and life, and were almost as 
if dead. 

‘In the old time,’’ said the chief of engineers, “there 
were fairies of our tribe who could crumble a rock like 
that.” 

“In the old time,” said a bowed miner, “there were 
men of our tribe who could have brought the water here 
in conduits and watered these roots until they lived 
again.” 

“In the old time,” sang out a young man, “we would 
have beaten upon this rock with a thousand hammers 
until it made way for us !” And he began to beat upon the 
rock. 

“In the present time,” said the prince, “we can do 
all that has been done before, and more too.” 

He commanded his men to rest, and after they had 
had their cuts bound up, and had eaten and slept, they 
returned to their task. Nor did they cease until all was 
done that would insure the future health and happiness 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


103 

of the oak. It was a great moment when the chief of engi- 
neers bowed before his prince and said : 

“I have the honor to report, O prince, that all is 
done.” 

“Wealth awaits you, my engineer,” cried the prince, 
“and Queen Goldheart is mine!” 

Already the great branches of the oak breathed with 
relief, and tossed themselves in fresh joy. It sang a beau- 
tiful song that day, and mingled with it was the wild, 
clear voice of Verda the dryad, chanting praises. 


CHAPTER VII 


I T would not be worth while to tell how Edda got 
back into her natural size the night when the rock 
fairies saved the oak if her experience had not been 
such a strange one. 

She had been floated safe ashore in her rose-leaf 
shallop, and, very tired and sleepy, was making her 
way toward her window when she suddenly remembered, 
with a shock, that she still was a mere fairy in size. 

“Oh, dear,” she cried, “what shall I do*? I had for- 
gotten all about myself.” 

“That, my child, is the very best thing you can do,” 
said a hoarse voice at her side. Edda at once knew it for 
the voice of the crow, and turned to him, expecting that 
he would help her out in the old way. But instead 
of that he said, “Climb, Edda, climb!” So she put her 
tiny hands to the honeysuckle vines and was soon slipping 
down the curtain cord to the floor of her own room. No 
104 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


105 


sooner had she landed there than a little wind began to 
stir. At first it only rustled the leaves of the honeysuckle, 
but it grew fiercer and fiercer until it blew Edda round 
and round the room. She could see no sense in it all until 
she began to notice that while she was being whirled 
around she really was winding up and up like a corkscrew, 
and in a few minutes was her own right and proper size. 
At that the wind went down, the crow flew away, and 
creeping into her bed she fell fast asleep. 

It would be pleasant, too, to tell all that happened to 
her that day, for it was a delightful day, in which Edda 
made some friends and saw some fine sights, but what 
came to her in the night was yet more marvelous, and so 
it will be best to go at once to the night adventures. 

Edda had gone early to bed, and had been sleeping 
quite a long time, when she was awakened by many high, 
shrill little voices. 

“I say she ought to know !” 

“Something is going to happen, and the child should 
be there!” 

“Has no one brought her an invitation^” 

“Has n’t Goldheart sent an invitation?” 

“You don’t suppose the dryad has forgotten her!” 


io6 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


“You don’t get a coronation and a wedding every 
night.” 

“I say we ought to awaken the child ! There ’s going 
to be more fun than ever before, and she likes fun. She 
told me so.” 

“I know it. She ’s like us. She likes fun.” 

“And she ’s not too good.” 

“Not too good!” 

“Well, then here we go!” 

At that, a company of elves swarmed off the foot- 
board and began tweaking Edda’s nose, tickling her 
chin, pulling her hair and ears, and dragging open her 
eyelids. 

She laughed so she could hardly speak, but at last 
she managed to shake them off good-naturedly and to 
sit up in bed. 

“Whose wedding is it*?” she asked. “Who is going 
to be coronated?” 

“Coronated, indeed!” they cried. “Who ever heard 
such an expression! Excuse us, Edda, but really you 
ought to go to school.” 

Then they fell to giggling and tittering until Edda’s 
ears actually itched, and she shouted : 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


107 


“Hush, you silly little things!” 

At this moment Red Top appeared, with his coat 
shining as Edda never had seen it shine before, and his 
top-knot dressed in the highest form of the art. 

“Edda,” he cried, “I come with a loving invitation 
from Goldheart for you to attend her wedding ceremonies. 
She begs that you and the dryad will be her maids-in- 
waiting. Prince Pietro sends his respects, and requests 
particularly that you will be near him at the great 
moment when he is made king. For these beautiful cere- 
monies the Black Master has presented you with a fitting 
costume, which I have here.” 

With that he set near her a tiny box of carved ivory, 
which could have contained, perhaps, a handkerchief and 
a pair of gloves for the real Edda. 

“How kind they all are !” cried Edda. “And you are 
kind and good too. Red Top. But of what use will all 
this be unless I can be made over once again into the 
little size?” 

“Edda,” said the woodpecker, and his voice trem- 
bled. “I have with me here a shrinking pill, sent by the 
crow with his love. But before you take it, I ’m to tell 
you this, — never, never again can you be made down into 


io8 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


a playmate of the garden creatures. True, you may, 
sometimes, when you have been happy and good, hear 
what we are saying, or catch glimpses of the elves or the 
fairies, but never more will you be one of us. Thrice 
only in a lifetime does it come to mortals to share our 
lives with us. Will you come with us to-night — make 
this your last fairy night — or will you wait until another 
time?” 

'‘Red Top,” said Edda gravely, not caring at all 
that the squirrel had joined them and was sitting on the 
top of her mirror, stroking his whiskers and watching her 
with his teasing smile, “I will take the shrinking pill now. 
The time might never come again when I could go to a 
wedding and a cor — ” 

" — Onation,” finished the woodpecker. 

" — Onation again. As for being a fairy, that is really 
not what I was born for. I ’m a little girl, and all the 
people I love expect me to stay a little girl. So it ’s all 
right, dear Red Top. Please give me the shrinking pill.” 

“Yes, do, do!” cried the elves. 

In a moment Edda was the size of a fairy, and tak- 
ing her carved ivory box with her she withdrew behind a 
hassock and soon was clothed in the charming garments 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


109 


which the crow had sent her. The frock was the color 
of wild-rose leaves, the cape like the woven leaves of vio- 
lets, the necklace was of tiny pearls, and the tiara of fire 
opals. As for the fan, it was the painted wing of a pink 
and gray moth, and on the pink slippers were buckles with 
opals set in them. When, by standing on her dressing- 
table, she was able to see herself in the looking-glass she 
could not at first believe this exquisite little creature was 
herself. She was so pleased with what she saw that she 
might have stayed there a long time — for Edda could be 
vain, like some other little girls — if it had not been that 
suddenly she was taken off her feet by twenty elves, that 
caught hold of her and threw her on to the squirrel’s back. 
Now Edda really, in her heart of hearts, did not like the 
squirrel, and she knew he knew it, so she was much mor- 
tified when she was obliged to hold tight to his neck in 
order not to be thrown off. He was a frisky steed, and 
took about twice as many steps as were necessary. It 
seemed impossible for him to go straight ahead in a rea- 
sonable way. He would stop and perk his head and show 
his teeth, then dash forward, and then again suddenly 
stop, so that Edda was all but thrown over his head. 

But in spite of all, he finally reached the garden with 


110 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


her. Here there was the greatest excitement. Rock 
fairies were dashing along with their arms laden with 
flowers and vines, water fairies were tripping about with 
wedding garments and gifts in their arms, and an army 
of flower dolls was preparing a banquet. Musicians sat 
about on knolls practising the wedding music; heralds 
were blowing their trumpets, going over their saluta- 
tions; and the prime minister was rehearsing the speech 
he was to make at the coronation. Nowhere was there 
any peace or quiet. Not that Edda wished for peace or 
quiet ; this was her last fairy night, and her heart beat with 
excitement, and her feet tripped along the path as if she 
had been born a member of these happy tribes. 

Red Top walked by her — for the squirrel had gone 
away on other business — until they came to the dryad’s 
house. The crowds were gathering about the oak, and 
here, indeed, the wedding procession of Goldheart was 
formed. 

Although this was the greatest occasion of her life, 
the queen did not forget her friends, or neglect to say 
those kind things which came so naturally to her. 

'‘Dear Edda,” she said in her silvery voice, “walk at 
my right; and you, Verda, at my left.” This she uttered 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


111 


in a queenly tone, but afterward she whispered, “Girls, 
how do I look^” 

There was no denying that she looked just the way 
a fairy queen ought to look on her wedding night. Her 
garments shimmered silver and blue like moonbeams on 
water, her jewels were diamonds, her veil was like moon- 
mist. 

When the procession was formed, beetles marched 
before her as heralds, and other beetles as an escort; then 
came her sailors, her wise men, her musicians, and last, 
her own friendly people, of whom there was a great num- 
ber. As the procession marched along, the flowers nodded 
to them, the birds, waking in their nests, called out good 
wishes, little furred creatures, the ridiculous old owl, care- 
free insects in the grass, all gave them good wishes after 
their fashion. 

To Edda’s surprise they went on to the hollyhocks, 
and past them, then through a break in the great stone 
wall, and out into the wild. Walking between fringed 
grasses, wild poppies, and daisies, they came at last to a 
little green dell. At the end of it, clad in yellow silk, 
stood a dignified figure beneath a beautiful canopy of 
striped velvet. 


112 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


“Jack-in-tne-Pulpit,” whispered the queen. “He is 
to perform the ceremonies.” 

The rock fairies, gleaming as seaweed glimmers in 
browns and greens, dull pinks, and splendid purples, were 
already there, awaiting them. Prince Pietro was in pur- 
ple, with amethysts and peridots for his jewels. As 
Goldheart’s procession advanced, his musicians played 
welcoming music so rarely beautiful that it sounded like 
the summer song of the sea on the beach. The feet of all 
the little creatures gathered there hardly touched the 
earth, so happy were they. 

It was difficult for Edda to see and understand all 
that happened, for before she had become used to the 
beauty of the scene and the music. Prince Pietro, between 
his minister and his chamberlain, was advancing to take 
his oath as king before the lofty figure beneath the can- 
opy. And when that was done, music burst from all the 
trumpets and the people shouted until the heads of the 
flowers quivered on their stems. 

Then Edda was pushed gently forward, and found 
herself assisting Goldheart to the altar, where King 
Pietro awaited her, and where, after the solemn words 
spoken by the priest, a marriage ring was put upon Gold- 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


113 

heart’s finger, and she was made the wife of Pietro, ruler 
over all fays from this day on. 

It had been next to impossible to keep Flint from 
twanging his harp at the wrong places, so eager had he 
been to sing of the greatness of his master and of the 
beauty and goodness of his bride, and now they could 
keep him quiet no longer. Moreover, the elves, who had 
behaved badly, and who had been threatened with pun- 
ishment by the beetles more than once for the manner in 
which they giggled and pushed and tittered and sneezed, 
now made such a noise that it was as if all the tree-toads 
in the neighborhood had set up a clamor. Edda was 
dreadfully ashamed of them. She knew they had made 
up their minds to have fun, but she thought this a poor 
sort of fun. They threw elfin shoes and flower pollen 
at the royal bride and groom, and blew on grasses, and 
made sudden noises by pulling off the heads of the snap- 
dragons. 

However, every one laughed and shouted, and the 
king and queen said to Edda : 

‘‘But for you, our happiness might never have come 
about!” 

Every one shook hands with Verda and Edda as well 


114 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


as with the king and queen, and told them they were very 
beautiful. 

It was a delightful hour, for not only were these 
many, many little creatures as gay and proud as they 
could be, but the summer moon seemed to have such pleas- 
ure in shedding its tender light, the soft wind was so glad 
to blow among the trees, the perfumes of the flowers were 
so charmed to creep in and out of the green alleys of the 
grass, and the fireflies so eager to swing their shining lan- 
terns, that nothing was left to be desired. 

The bluebells had been ringing a carillon for the 
bride and groom, but this music now gave place to the 
clanging of the morning-glories, which announced that 
the banquet awaited them. So back they filed into the 
garden and along the paths until they came to the oak, 
around which the table ran. Though the oak was so large 
that if grandmother and Aunt Caroline and Edda had 
reached out their arms, only touching the tips of their 
fingers, they could not have reached quite around the 
trunk, yet when all the wedding guests were seated there 
was not a vacant place. Their dishes were of acorn cups, 
and the waiters were flower dolls — dozens upon dozens 
of them. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


115 

“Where could they all have come from'?” asked 
Edda of the dryad. “Aunt Caroline made me a few 
flower dolls and acorn dishes the other day, but here are 
more than I can count.” 

“Oh,” answered the dryad, “these are the spirits of 
all the flower dolls and all the dishes that ever were made 
in the garden from the time your Aunt Caroline was a 
little girl. In the daytime they go to the Never-Never 
land, and human beings think they are lost and wilted. 
But things once done in fairyland are done forever. The 
fairies take charge of them, and on fairv nights they come 
to life and into use.” 

After the feast there were toasts drunk and speeches 
made, and Flint sang a long song. At length the dryad 
was bidden to speak, and in a voice like a silver horn she 
said : 

“Greatly have I been honored this night by the king 
and queen of the fairies — ” 

“May they live forever!” cried the people. 

“And I shall not forget this day though I live five 
hundred years more.” 

“I should n’t like to have to give her birthday pres- 
ents,” whispered the squirrel, who, too restless to sit still. 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


1 16 

had been running about here and there, making free with 
his betters. 

“I,” went on Verda, “who am the spirit of the oak, 
am full of gratitude for the great service that has been 
done me, and I should think it the greatest honor of my 
life if the king and queen and all their guests would end 
this happy night by paying a visit to my home. I have 
dwelt there too long alone, without guests or merrymak- 
ing, but from this time I mean to change my mode of life. 
For years you have danced beneath the shade of the 
oak. To-night I bid you climb the steps to my home and 
share with me all that I have.” 

King Pietro and Queen Goldheart were graciously 
pleased to accept this invitation, and with a shout all 
of the people followed them to a lofty flight of stairs, 
which until then had been invisible but which was now 
seen to wind round and about the tree until it reached 
the great cleft in the oak. Edda was about to take her 
place in the procession with Verda when a whisper from 
Red Top made her stop. 

“Wait, child,” he said in a fatherly tone. “I ’ll tell 
you this, they are likely to stay in there dancing and eat- 
ing and drinking until morning. Now I tell you for 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


117 



of turning back for a thousand years and a day, and your 
absence would be likely to be noticed/’ 

“So it would,” said Edda, with her usual sweetness. 
“You are good to warn me, woodpecker, but don’t you 
suppose I ’d dare run the risk? It is very hard to leave 
just now when every one is having such a good time.” 
While they talked the procession had been passing 


your own good, as a tried and trusty friend should, if 
you go with them you are likely to get caught out after 
cockcrow. If that were to happen, not all the king’s 
horses or all the king’s men could change you back into 
the real Edda again. You ’d be a fairy without a chance 


“their dishes were of acorn cups, and the waiters were 
FLOWER dolls'' 


ii8 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


almost as fast as running water, and though it really 
seemed impossible that even in fairyland anything could 
have happened so quickly, yet when Edda looked up all 
of her companions had vanished except the squirrel, who 
seemed to be more amused at her than ever. 

“You see,” said the woodpecker, “already it is too 
late! Bushy Tail, kindly see this lady home. I have 
other duties to which I must attend. Edda,” he bowed 
low before her, “it has been a pleasure to meet you.” 
And he flew up into the open mouth of the strange old 
bark face in the oak. 

“Good-by!” exclaimed Edda, opening her mouth till 
it stretched almost as wide as that of the tree-face. “You 
don’t mean — ” 

“Yes he does,” said the squirrel, laughing in his dis- 
agreeable way. “Come.” He stooped for her to mount, 
but without being quite able to tell why, she so disliked 
him that she would not have his help. 

“Oh, very well,” he said angrily, “stay where you 
are and how you are, if you like. But I ’ll tell you this, 
you are a funny kind of a fairy, Edda. Why, if you ’re 
a real fairy, don’t you ride on snails and on butterflies, 
rock on twigs, drink the dew of flowers, sleep in the 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


119 


fern^? I have almost split my sides watching you, but 
I ’ve had enough of you. You no longer amuse me. 
Good-by, Edda,” and he too was lost in the branches of 
the oak. 

“Well!” said Edda, and sat down to think. Little 
drops of rain began to fall, but as they splashed about the 
tiny, tiny Edda they seemed so large she feared she would 
be drowned. It was as if buckets of water were being 
poured upon her. It took only a moment to ruin her fairy 
clothes, and she began to shiver in a chill. At this 
moment, when she was as sad as ever she had been in her 
life, the crow. Black Master of all dark garden arts, came 
walking slowly down the path. When he saw Edda he 
guessed the whole truth. 

“Human feet cannot follow where fairy feet lead,” 
he said in a solemn voice. 

“I ’m ready to be a little girl for good and all, mas- 
ter,” sighed Edda, mopping the tears from her eyes with 
her wee lace handkerchief. “I Ve had ever so much fun, 
and I thank you and thank you, but I ’d like to go home.” 

“You shall,” said the crow, who, though so solemn, 
always was kind. He gave a strange call, and out of a 
near-by tree fluttered a wild-looking moth with a head 


120 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


like a skull and crossbones upon his wings. He was 
black and white and huge, and his wings made a great 
flapping as he flew. Edda was really afraid of him, but 
she dared not disobey the crow, and when he told her to 
seat herself between these dreadful wings, she did so. 

‘'Good-by, Edda,” said the crow as the others had 
done. 

The moth rose slowly and Edda clung to his back, 
trying hard not to cry. He dropped her on her own bed, 
put a growing pill between her lips — he had carried it 
daintily in his “feelers” — and as she curled up and felt 
the warmth from her eider-down quilt creeping over her 
cold little body, she knew that she was lengthening out 
to the size of the true and real Edda, and that never 
again would she be allowed to visit fairyland. 


CHAPTER VIII 


B efore dawn the rain had ceased, so that when 
the sun shone out on the world it found it fresh 
and newly washed. Drops of crystal lay in every 
flower, the leaves of the oak shone with a richer glow, 
and the sky was as free from clouds as Edda’s face. 

She lay in bed for at least half an hour after her eyes 
had opened, looking about her at the pretty, neat little 
room, and thinking how she would miss it, with its scent 
of the honeysuckle and its glimpses of the sky between 
the tree branches, when she had gone back to the Top 
Flat, where there was nothing to see from her bedroom 
window except the whitewashed court. She had been so 
busy and so happy that she really had not thought about 
her mother and father and the others at home, except now 
and then, in between other thoughts. The memory of 
them had slipped into the cracks of her thought, so to 
speak. But now, when she was not expecting it at all, a 
great dark genie called Homesickness spread out before 

I2I 


122 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


her, and for a little while hid everything else. She 
remembered hearing her mamma say that her poor daddy 
was tired almost to death, working there in the city, and 
she knew that her mamma was not really happy in the 
Top Flat. 

‘‘We were people who grew up in yards,” she often 
had heard her mamma say. “We hardly know how to 
behave in a flat.” 

What a pity it was that they could not all three, with 
Bubbles the cat, and Adelaide Alice the doll, and even 
that nice Toby, the black boy who ran the elevator, get 
together somewhere in the country and be happy ever- 
more! There must be places, Edda thought, where 
daddies were not too tired, and where mammas who liked 
yards could have them. 

A pleasant Chinese gong sounded from below stairs, 
saying as plainly as a gong could that it was time to get 
up and dress. 

“Your bath is drawn for you, Edda, dear,” Aunt 
Caroline’s voice called from without, and Edda fluttered 
to the dainty bathroom and splashed in the tub, singing at 
the top of her lungs. In the Top Flat she could not have 
done that for fear of disturbing others. Nor could she, in 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


123 


the Top Flat, have danced as she dressed, or shouted out 
of the window to grandmother, who was gathering fresh 
red strawberries for breakfast; or turned on the little 
music box so that it could play “When Johnny Comes 
Marching Home” while they were eating. 

There seemed to be some sort of a secret in the air, 
for Edda heard her grandmother whisper to Aunt Caro- 
line, “Have you told her yet?” and Aunt Caroline say, 
“Not yet.” In fact, a secret seemed to be hanging just 
above her head, and she felt as if she would only have to 
reach up and pick it off some sort of a tree of knowledge. 
But perhaps the secret was not quite ripe yet; she had 
learned that fruit must be left on the tree until it was 
ripe. How many things had she not learned since she 
came into the country? When she looked back on the 
stupid, dull little thing she had been a few days before 
when she knew nothing except Top Flat facts, she was 
ashamed of herself. And the wonderful part of it all was 
that she could go right on learning and playing and 
finding out things and doing them. She knew that after 
this she always would find something to do. She need 
never again have such long, long days — and all alike — 
as she had had back at home. 


124 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


She helped with the work as usual, but she did not go 
driving with grandmother and Aunt Caroline, because 
they had a special reason for wishing to go without her. 
They had, they said, so many things to bring home in the 
cart that they would rather Edda stayed at home. 

“Shall you be lonesome, Edda?” asked Aunt 
Caroline. 

Lonesome? A few days before, if Edda had been 
left alone for a morning, she would have been most ter- 
ribly lonesome. But now she smiled back into Aunt 
Caroline’s green eyes and shook her head. 

“I know plenty and plenty of things to do,” she 

said. 

Aunt Caroline nodded several times, and smiled in a 
way which said that she and Edda understood each other 
perfectly. Edda saw her aunt and grandmother off in 
the phaeton, and then looked about to amuse herself. 
First she tied a blue ribbon around the neck of the six- 
toed cat; then she picked some poppies for the blue vase 
that sat on the taboret, then she went up to see if her room 
was as tidy as such a pretty room ought to be. And 
after that she went walking. 

As she went down the garden path and thought of all 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


125 


that had come to her during her fairy nights, she won- 
dered that she was not sad because she had used up all 
of her fairy rights. But she found she did not mind at 
all. It had been sweet as sweet, but no doubt, Edda 
thought to herself, what was coming next would be 
sweeter. That was the wonder of it, after one had 
learned how to be happy one need n’t care because cer- 
tain pleasant times were past. Plenty more would be 
coming on. 

So, singing to herself, she went on down the path, 
past the oak, on to the hollyhocks, and then turned along 
a narrow path where she had not yet been. Passing by 
the raspberry and currant bushes, she came to a little low 
gateway. The latch lifted without trouble, and she 
found herself in an orchard of apple trees. The kind 
wide branches spread above her head like green umbrel- 
las, and beneath her feet the grass lay long and soft. 

She walked on for a way beneath these trees, and 
then came to a place where a sunny little hill raised 
itself, and where the grasses smelled hot and sweet. She 
went to the very top of this, and looked off to where a 
row of Lombardy poplars lay against the sky, and far 
away she could see the river winding through the fields. 


126 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


and the little homes standing about among the gardens 
and the meadows. 

“I wish,” said Edda aloud, “that I could live here 
always and always. Oh, how I wish papa and mamma 
could come here, and that I need never, never go back to 
the Top Flat.” 

She sat down to think the matter over, and some- 
how, without at all dreaming that such a thing was going 
to happen, her eyes closed, and she sank back among 
the sun-warmed grasses and clovers and slept. But not 
for long. Some little, little noise awoke her, and turn- 
ing over so that she could rest on her elbow, she saw 
Goldheart, no longer in her splendid garments but 
dressed like a queen who had her own work to do in the 
world. 

She was talking to Bushy Tail, who, with paws 
crossed meekly upon his breast, was listening to her as 
if he were the politest and kindest of creatures. 

“It is not my nature,” Goldheart was saying in her 
gentlest way, “to find fault with any of the garden 
folk, but really, my dear Bushy Tail, word has come 
to me that you are not showing your best side to your 
friends.” 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


127 

Edda could hear the squirrel making some sort of 
a regretful murmur. 

“Woodpecker says you suck eggs — ” 

A flash of Bushy Tail’s sharp white teeth showed 
him to be not so meek as he looked, and Goldheart almost 
turned from him; then, because she could not bear to 
think badly of any one, she spoke again. 

“But, Bushy Tail, other and more serious reports 
have come to me. It has been whispered to me that you 
sneer and fleer. I would rather you did wrong outright, 
my dear friend, than that you should sneer and fleer. 
You are not winning friends for yourself, but making 
enemies, and knowing your real nature — ” 

But at this moment, looking up, the gentle Gold’ 
heart saw Bushy Tail darting one of his sidelong glances 
at her in such a reckless and impudent manner that she 
turned from him in anger and walked proudly away. 
She had turned her back on him for good and all, and 
Edda could not help feeling sorry for him, bad as 
he was. Yet she was delighted to have caught one more 
glimpse of the fairy queen. She had feared that such 
happiness might never again be hers, although, now she 
came to think of it, the crow had said that at moments 


128 


EDDA AND THE OAK 



QUEEN GOLUIIEART AND BUSHY TAIL 

when she was happy and good she still might catch 
glimpses of the fairy world, although she could no 
longer take part in it. 

After all, what did it matter There were things 
she wanted much, much more than to be a playmate of 
fairies. If she could just see her mamma — 

But she must not spoil her visit by growing home- 
sick, that was certain. That would show her to be a 
stupid child. It was much better to be grateful for all 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


129 



QUEEN COLDHEART TURNS HER RACK ON BUSHY TAIL 

the pleasures and joys that were coming to her. She 
thought very hard about these matters as she made her 
way back through the orchard and into the garden again. 
It was so still there that it seemed impossible that only 
the night before it had rung to the sound of hundreds of 
little voices, and been the scene of the great coronation 
and wedding pageant. Edda sank on to a seat to think 
about it. Had it been a dream? She wished she might 
ask the question of the tall, friendly looking lilies that 



130 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


grew about the garden seat, or coax some answer from the 
sweet-william. But in broad daylight it would not do 
to ask questions of flowers. 

“Child,” said a voice above her head, “are you happy 
here?’ 

Edda stopped swinging her feet and looked up. 
There sat the crow, the Black Master among the birds, 
who could talk as if he were the little brother of 
man, who knew the fairies, and who held many secrets 
in his ancient heart. 

“Happy?” repeated Edda. “Of course I ’m happy.” 

“And not fretting because you ’re not a fairy?” 

“ I ’m not fretting about anything,” said Edda, and 
then hesitated because she remembered how homesick 
she had been. Besides, the crow was smiling as if he 
knew her thoughts as well as she did herself. 

“It is a place to be happy in,” went on the crow. “I 
myself am happy here, and I have seen your grandmother 
playing around this garden when she was no older than 
you. Your father played here, too, when he was a little 
boy, and your Aunt Caroline was the happiest and gay- 
est child of all. Indeed, she liked so well to be a child 
that she has kept the heart of a child, although she has 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


131 

grown to be a woman. And now you, Edda, are to grow 
up here.” 

Oh, no, crow. You’re mistaken. I’m here 
only for a little while — just a tiny while. Then I must 
go back to the Top Flat.” 

The Black Master flapped his wings and gave forth 
a hoarse laugh. 

“What ’s coming is coming,” he said in a mysterious 
tone. “Speak to me sometimes, Edda, and remember, 
when you wish to find out a secret, come to me!” 

He lifted himself slowly, circled three times above 
her head, and then flew up and up into the blue sky. 

“Only think,” said Edda, “how fine it would be 
to have wings like that!” 

But as she had no wings, only legs and feet, she 
made use of what she had and walked slowly toward the 
house. She expected to find it silent and empty, but 
there were Aunt Caroline and grandmother and Lily 
White the horse, all home again, and there were packages 
and bundles of all sorts being carried in, and a great air 
of excitement. 

“Oh, little Edda, child,” cried Aunt Caroline, “there 
you are! Are you happy here, Edda?” 


32 


EDDA AND THE OAK 



It was the same question the crow had asked. 

Edda ran and threw her arms about her aunt’s 

neck. 

“I ’m happy up to my eyes!” she said. ‘"Only—” 
‘‘Yes?” said Aunt Caroline. “Only — ” 

<CTr 99 

It mamma — 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


133 

“I ’ve simply got to tell the child,” said Aunt Caro- 
line to her mother. 

Grandmother smoothed her silver hair with her 
white hand. 

“Why not?” she asked, with her sweet smile. 

“Well, then,” said Aunt Caroline, “you are to live 
here, little One-in-a- thousand, as long as you please. You 
are to be the little girl in the garden as I used to be. It ’s 
the truth I ’m telling you, and you need n’t look as if you 
did n’t believe your own, own aunt. Your father and 
your mother will be here in a week — and Bubbles the cat 
— and Toby the black boy, to help with the chores. And 
your papa is to run the sixty-acre farm for your grand- 
mother.” 

“And I ’ll never have to go back to the Top Flat?” 

“Never, little girl! When you came here it was n’t 
quite decided, but now it ’s all arranged. Your grand- 
mother got a letter last night telling us it was to be, and 
I tried to keep it a secret from you and surprise you, but I 
could n’t do it. I ’m a great tattle-tale, Edda, partic- 
ularly when I have something pleasant to tell.” 

“You don’t seem so wonderfully surprised, child,” 
said grandmother kindly. 


134 


EDDA AND THE OAK 


Edda shook her head. 

“The crow told me,” she said simply, “but I did n’t 
know whether to believe him or not.” 

“What an odd little child you are, Edda!” said 
grandmother. “So like your Aunt Caroline.” 

Edda felt a little warm wave of happiness run over 
her. She looked about the room with its shining old fur- 
niture, and through the open windows at the garden. It 
was more beautiful, sweeter, dearer than anything she 
ever had dreamed. 

“I love you so !” she cried, and kissed her little grand- 
mother, and her Aunt Caroline. Then she threw a kiss 
out of the window. 

“And to whom is that kiss going*?” asked grand- 
mother. 

“Oh, that ’s for the oak!” cried Edda, and smiled at 
her Aunt Caroline. 


The End 















